


Dead Men Rising

by purplejabberwocky



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Gen, The Dead Men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-22 12:29:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 60,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplejabberwocky/pseuds/purplejabberwocky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tales of the Dead Men as youths, and how they came to be as individuals and as sorcerers.</p><p>First: The weaver. All Ailill wanted was a couple of werewolf pelts to make a cloak. Instead he got vampires and some old man who most definitely was not a faery.</p><p>Second: The stray. Máenach knows he's unprepared for the world outside his monastery. He just hopes he can avoid tainting too many innocents with his unhallowed soul.</p><p>Third: The shieldbearer. Damán is fairly sure family isn't meant to treat each other like this. He just doesn't understand why he's the one who's so different.</p><p>Fourth: The wanderer. The problem with life is, sometimes, it's just not worth living. Tadgh has figured out a way around that, but he wonders if it actually helps.</p><p>Fifth: The brother. With nine siblings to care for, the last thing Aodh needs is to fall ill. Getting possessed by a demon also wasn’t on the agenda.</p><p> </p><p>(NOTE: Spoilers for most recent books in the comments.)</p><p>(NOTE: 'The weaver' and 'The stray' are transferred from 'Dead Men Talking'. 'The stray' has been renamed from 'The brother'.)</p><p>(NOTE 2nd Sept 2014: Updated for canon compliance, no major spoilers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The weaver

“What do you think?” Ailill asked as the shawl settled over the table. It was, he congratulated himself, one of his best. He’d put more effort into it than he would admit, but the daughter of the Baron of Trimlestown was a very pretty lady. Pretty ladies liked pretty things, and Ailill was very good at weaving pretty things. They made him good money, for a journeyman.

But not nearly as much as a baron.

Aobhinn reached out to take a corner of the shawl, smoothing it between her fingers with a sigh. Not, Ailill realised as his grin faded, a sigh of pleasure.

“It’s not bad, I suppose,” she said, her tone only half interested. Then, as if realising she may have hurt his feelings, she added, “It’s pretty. I’m just not sure it’s … appropriate.”

Not appropriate? Ailill looked down at the shawl, spread out so every corner could be seen. He couldn’t afford most dyed wools, but, if he could say so himself, he was a _genius_ at using natural colours. It wasn’t _bright_ , but it was very definitely pretty. Edged with a brown that looked almost golden in contrast to the dark mahogany that made up the bulk of the shawl, its centre was woven with a bouquet of cream-coloured carnations and tulips.

“It matches your eyes,” he said rather lamely, feeling as though someone had popped something inside of him. Aobhinn patted his arm. It only made him feel worse. Like he was being condescended to.

“Oh, it’s lovely, really. It’s just … well …” She hesitated, and even the knowledge that he _was_ being condescended to, that he was being played like a cheap fiddle, wasn’t enough to keep Ailill from answering.

“What?”

“It’s just that …” She looked down, smoothing out her skirt. Ailill found himself wishing she was rather less lovely, and her father rather less tolerant of suitors below his daughter’s class, and waited. “I was rather hoping for something woven out of a fabric more … exotic.”

Ailill’s face fell, but the way Aobhinn looked at him, coyly through her eyelashes, told him she was quite deliberately leading him somewhere and sent a tingle of heat to his groin. Ailill rallied gallantly and said, “Well, I _am_ known for my talent in finding treasures. Did you have something particular in mind, my lady?”

She giggled and Ailill was just starting to regain his confidence when Aobhinn dropped her anvil. “I want a shawl woven of a werewolf’s fur.”

Ailill gaped. He knew he was gaping but he couldn’t stop it, no matter how much his subconscious whined that he was looking like a right ass. Aobhinn giggled again, this time lifting a hand to her mouth in a way that didn’t hide her amusement at all but which _did_ act like a bucket of water over Ailill’s head. He smiled with cautious, self-conscious relief. “You’re playing with me, aren’t you?”

“Oh, no!” Aobhinn exclaimed, and leaned forward. For the first time since their acquaintance had begun, she looked well and truly _excited_. Her mahogany eyes sparkled, her cheeks were rosy, her full lips parted and her bosom heaved wildly … Ailill dragged his gaze up. “I really do want one. You must have heard—that someone with a cloak made from the fur of a werewolf will be protected from turning into one if bitten.”

He nodded dumbly. She took a deep breath which her corset made extremely obvious in an extremely interesting way, folding her hands in her lap. “We’ve had reports of werewolves in the barony. People being bitten. Killed. Monsters in the woods.” She blinked rapidly, and Ailill had to squash the urge to gather her up in his arms. “I’m my father’s only child, Ailill. If something should happen to me …”

Her fingers pressed to her lips as she turned her face away. Ailill stood rigid. There was silence as he observed numbly that tonight was, indeed, the first of the full lunar cycle. That the sight of Aobhinn’s tears was doing very frustrating and disturbing things to his chest and lower regions. That, even _knowing_ beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was playing him expertly, he was saying, “I’ll get one for you. A pelt, I mean. Or two. Or more. More would probably be better. One pelt wouldn’t give me enough fur.”

Aobhinn squealed and threw her arms around him, and for those several moments in which he could bask in the heat between them, Ailill didn’t even wonder what the hell was wrong with him.

 

That night Ailill forced his way through the undergrowth, cursing the baron, the baron’s daughter and most of all his own libido. “I’m a weaver, not a bloody hunter,” he muttered as he pushed aside a branch that slid from his grasp and almost lashed back right in his face. He complained out loud, “Why am I doing this?”

And then almost immediately answered: “Because she’s gorgeous and you can’t say no to a pretty lady.”

Satisfied that he at least knew what his flaws were, if not how to fix them, Ailill glanced down at the rough map he had managed to draw of the area where Aobhinn claimed the attacks were taking place. Not that he was going to tell her, so as to avoid hurting her delicate feelings, but he had asked around just to make sure there actually _was_ something going on and not just a princess’s flights of fancy.

The other thing he wasn’t going to mention was the way his heart had sunk lower with each whisper. At least if it hadn’t been true he could have light-footed it out of the area and left the baron to try and marry off his loony daughter to someone else, but since it _was_ true he was now honour-bound to go hunting.

The barkeep called him a fool. Ailill couldn’t disagree. The only thing was that Ailill knew those sorts of rumours _were_ true. Which, of course, made it a very good thing he had tricks up his sleeves.

His hand rested on the hilt of his hunting knife as he pushed into the clearing where the last attack had taken place. Backtrack, yes?

Ailill caught movement out of the corner of his eye and was just turning to see what it was when he shot sideways, hit a tree and fell gasping to the ground. His ears rang as he tried to suck in air. He realised just a little too late that the ring was actually a shriek, and rolled over dazedly to see what was making that noise.

He glimpsed a rushing figure, and then that figure slammed to the side as if hit by an invisible anvil, cartwheeling across the clearing. It spun and struck a broken branch jutting out toward the moon; its limbs spasmed and then the figure fell still. Ailill’s breath caught and he dragged in air, trying to move his limbs, wide-eyed and unable to take his gaze from the scene. So unable, in fact, that he didn’t notice the second figure until it was right next to the first. Ailill tried to croak something, but he wasn’t sure what.

It came out as a squeak as the second figure, shorter and stockier than the other, came within arm’s reach of the impaled man. The impaled man snarled suddenly, hands lashing out too quick to register. The stocky stranger leaned back, avoiding the groping claws, and drew the sword Ailill hadn’t seen under his cloak.

There was a flash of moonlight. Ailill yelped at the dark spurt of blood, the quiver of the body, the wet thud of its head hitting the ground. There was a snap and the head exploded into flames so bright that Ailill was blinded. He heard a deep voice ask, “Are you still alive over there, lad, or do I need to find a gravedigger?”

Ailill swallowed, mouth working, and finally managed to blurt out, “Oy! That was mine!”

There was a pause. It could have been an incredulous pause, but it was probably one of relief. Probably.

“He was _yours_? Looked to me more like you were about to become _his_.”

Definitely an incredulous pause. Ailill wished his mouth knew when to shut up, but since his vision was blurring into actual visibility he focussed on squinting through the after-images to the man standing beside the fire. He was dark-haired, broad-shouldered, with the look of a soldier or maybe a blacksmith.

While Ailill was taking this in, his mouth decided to continue its previous conversation. “I needed it. Two of them, actually. Or as many as I can get. I mean, after they’d changed. They change on moonrise, right? He hadn’t changed yet. You shouldn’t have killed him.”

There was another, even more deeply incredulous pause, only this time it was also shaped by bemusement. “What in hell are you talking about?”

“The werewolf,” Ailill explained a little more slowly, having got control of his mouth, and slowly levered himself up. Pain lashed down his back and he hissed as he rose. “I need its pelt.”

The flames were dying, the stomach-turning scent of burning flesh starting to drift even upwind toward Ailill. The stranger didn’t seem to care about the smell; he was staring at Ailill, and yes, that was definitely incredulity on his face. “That’s a _vampire_ ,” he said. “And it’s already changed, in case you didn’t notice from the fact it was about to tear you to shreds.”

Ailill’s shoulders slumped. “Oh.”

There was another pause, this one more contemplative than the others. Contemplative and filled with a burning sort of curiosity. Finally the stranger asked, “Why are you after a couple of werewolf pelts?”

Ailill drew himself up. “I happen to be a skilled, if admittedly inexperienced, hunter of the dark and evil, and heard the barony was beset with strife—” The stranger snorted loud, long and with amused disbelief. Ailill slumped again. “I was trying to impress a pretty lady.”

“Thought it might have been something like that,” said the man amiably.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen any werewolves on your vampire-slaying tour of the area?” Ailill asked.

The stranger shook his head as he came near, sheathing the sword he had been cleaning on a rag. “Afraid not. They don’t usually live in the same area. Vampires and werewolves don’t get along all too well.”

“I guess that means I’ll have to go back to town and forget the whole thing.” Ailill sighed melodramatically, but despite his tone he was genuinely relieved. Just … not as much as he thought. “Woe. Woe is me.”

The truth was that he didn’t want to go back to town anymore. Alright, so vampires were worse than werewolves, but there was something about this man that intrigued him. Mainly the fact that he had made a head burst into flames without the benefit of tinder, wood or even a spark. The other thing which made him curious was that, now he could see the man’s face, he could also see the man was looking at him strangely—though not quite as obviously as Ailill was staring in returned fascination.

“You know, it’s not often I meet a mortal who doesn’t start attempting an exorcism when I burn things in front of them without the help of tinder,” observed the stranger. Ailill abruptly realised that he hadn’t. Because he’d been startled, but not surprised. Because he’d seen those skills before.

“Who says I’m a mortal?” he asked, striving for casual disdain.

“Because a sorcerer would know the difference between werewolves and vampires,” said the man dryly.

“Maybe I’m something in-between,” Ailill suggested.

“Such as?” The stranger wasn’t exactly _pretending_ to be unimpressed, but Ailill could tell that he was amused and curious in spite of that. There was something else too. Most people either dismissed Ailill because they were only interested in his business or assumed from his conduct they knew all they needed to know—or indulged him like he was a child who had never quite grown up and he would learn soon enough. Those who didn’t treat him like either weren’t dismissive, or indulgent, but apathetic.

Not this man. He seemed genuinely amused—in a longsuffering way, but not a condescending one.

Which, Ailill hoped, was why he found himself answering, even though he hadn’t consciously meant to. “Maybe I can do some things myself and didn’t know anyone else who could.”

There was a beat of silence. Ailill felt himself going slowly red, and hoped the man couldn’t see it in the dim light. Then the stranger nodded, rubbed his forehead, and jerked his thumb toward the trees. “Camp’s this way. Come on.” Ailill stared as the man moved off but at the first line of trees he paused and called back, “Unless you’d rather navigate the woods and vampires alone all the way back to town.”

“No, not really.” Hastily Ailill caught up, ploughing through the trees and bushes in such a way that made him feel like a lumbering ox, especially with how the vampire slayer seemed to fade into the background. Several times Ailill’s heart leapt to his throat when he lost sight of his guide, but then he’d see a flicker of firelight, round a tree, and there the man would be. As soon as Ailill was in sight the slayer would snuff the flames and be off again. It was very like what Ailill imagined followed a wood-sprite would be like, except he rather wished that the sprite would have been a lovely young woman rather than an older man.

Not that he would’ve had the energy to do much of anything when they reached their destination, presuming he wasn’t led into a faery-circle to begin with. Ailill was stumbling by the time he rounded another tree and found the stranger’s hand outstretched in a ‘stop’ motion. He opened his mouth to speak, but the man shook his head, beckoning. He turned, pushing past a thick bush of wild mint and vanishing behind it. Trying not to cough at the overwhelming scent, Aililll followed suit, clutching his cloak to him and edging around the prodding branches.

Behind the bush was a hole in the ground, with dry earth underfoot and stone overhead. Ailill surveyed the area for a moment and then spoke without thinking. “What, town’s too good for you?”

He wasn’t expecting the stranger to snort amusement. “First lesson of hunting,” said the man from the far end of the cave, “is to be where the vampires are. If I had to be in and out of town all the time, I’d get here too late. Besides that, spending enough time in one area means the wildlife begins to accept you as standard. You cast less of a ripple that way.”

Tinder flared and logs caught, and a moment later there was a steady but unobtrusive fire warming the cave, the smoke funnelling into a natural little hole leading up-ground. The stranger broke some sticks over it, feeding it just a little more and then looking up to where Ailill still stood at the entrance. “Well? Are you going to come in, or just stand there like a mummer?”

“Mummers are evil,” Ailill informed him as he moved deeper into the cave, looking around for a place to sit before finally rolling up his cloak and using it as a cushion. “I’ve had at least two of them pick my pockets.”

“That makes them resourceful, not evil,” said the slayer, pulling a small, battered tin pot out of his bag. He poured some water into it and set it into the fire. “You said you can do things. What kinds of things?”

“Things,” Ailill said lamely and self-consciously, watching the shadows dancing on the wall. They didn’t seem like much more than parlour tricks anymore, but he’d always been proud of them. They’d helped him. They were … actually, the only reason he was any good at weaving. “I can do the flame trick,” he admitted finally. “I’m faster at weaving than anyone I’ve heard, because I can weave at night.” Except for weavers who could afford candles or oil, and what kind of weaver could afford them on a regular basis?

“It’s a useful trick,” agreed the stranger. Ailill ploughed onward; for the first time, he had someone he knew it was safe to talk to. For the first time, he _could_ talk. And he did, his words spilling out.

“I can make sure my weaving’s finer or softer. It’s just a matter of manipulating the air right.” The stranger’s eyebrows shot upward. “And weaving is just … easier. I don’t need to rely so much on strength. I just use the air to work the heddle and shuttles, and it means I almost never miss a thread or have to start over—” He stopped short. The stranger looked genuinely impressed and was eyeing him thoughtfully.

“How old are you, boy?”

“Twenty-three.”

The slayer nodded thoughtfully. Ailill waited, holding his breath before realising it was a rather stupid thing to do. His companion caught the look and snorted, and for a moment Ailill was afraid the man was going to leave him in the dark. Then he said, “My wife was a weaver, so I know something about it. For you to have that kind of finesse at your age and only have self-learned, that’s impressive.”

Ailill felt a swell of pride, even felt the smile break across his face. Then he faltered. “Your wife? Doesn’t she mind you being out here in the middle of nowhere, hunting things that would like to tear you apart?”

Personally, _he_ wouldn’t be out in the middle of nowhere, in a dingy cave, if _he_ had a wife to rub his feet. The stranger smiled, gentle and melancholic. “She died in labour a few years after we were married—a while ago. She was an arrangement by my father; a good woman, but not the sort I’d have chosen for myself. I had too much wanderlust and she wanted a husband to stay at home.”

He shrugged. Ailill wasn’t sure which was more tragic: that the slayer wasn’t content with a good woman and a warm hearth, or that Ailill himself could actually understand why he wasn’t. “What about the baby?”

“Dead with her mama,” said the man simply. “That was two hundred years ago, of course.”

The last was added with such blandness that Ailill nodded before the words sank in. Then he stopped and stared, mouth open. The slayer laughed. Ailill blurted, “Two _hundred_? You can’t be over _two hundred_!”

“Sorcerers live longer than mortals do,” said the slayer with a shrug, reaching into his bag for a small fabric satchel and tin mug almost as large as the pot. “You keep using your magic, so will you. Corrival Deuce.”

“I’m—” Ailill began, and then cut off as Corrival held up a hand.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Or anyone else, for that matter. Haven’t you ever heard there’s power in names? ‘Deuce’ isn’t the name I was given as a boy. I chose it, as a shield for my other. If you want to go around introducing yourself to others, choose a name first.”

Reddening, Ailill nodded. Any idiot knew those stories, but excitement was making his heart flutter against his throat, and that made it difficult to think things through. Corrival seemed content to let him collect himself. He took the boiling water off the fire and shook some tea-leaves into it, crushing them into the bottom with the rag-covered hilt of a dagger.

“So you’ve got experience with fire and air,” Corrival said. “And none with earth—no, lad, you don’t,” he added as Ailill opened his mouth. Ailill shut it again, wishing his brain knew when to stop. “Earth magic only takes one form, and that turns you to stone. It’s the ultimate defence. You haven’t used it because weaving doesn’t ask you to, and because chances are you wouldn’t be here now if you had.”

“Oh.”

“But have you ever done any work with water?” Corrival asked, pouring some tea into the mug and handing it over. Ailill took it if only to warm his hands, wondering why Corrival hadn’t heated the water instantly. Surely he could do that, if he could control fire?

“Some,” he admitted. “I tried to use it to get the most out of my dyes, but it’s too hard to practise without trying to dye wool to begin with. Dye’s too expensive for that, especially when I make a mistake.”

“And if you buy dyed wool from merchants, they demand your soul,” Corrival finished. Ailill smiled weakly.

“Mostly I’ve managed to trade for undyed wool from farmers who don’t have the means to set up weaving themselves. I can afford to let them cheat me a little, since I can use magic to clean and bind it better than another weaver in my position.”

“Have you ever considered using magic for something else?”

The question, for some reason, came completely out of the blue. Ailill wasn’t sure why; it was a logical statement. Yet, at that moment, Ailill realised that it had never actually occurred to him before. For a long moment he sat gaping at Corrival; then his mouth snapped shut and he stammered, “I—uh—what …?”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’.” Corrival blew on the tea in his pot-turned-mug, using the edges of his cloak to lift it, and took a sip. “Isn’t a whole lot to suggest anyway, to be honest. Most sorcerers stick to their clans or stay under the wire as much as possible. Pitchforks and exorcising aren’t as much fun as they’re cracked up to be, and even sorcerers have trouble with most magical beasts. You’d do just as well becoming a great weaver. Be a good idea to get in touch with some other sorcerers, though. Even magic can go wrong, and it’s good to have backup.”

“Like you?” Ailill asked, and with far more hope in his voice than he meant. Corrival laughed.

“Me? No. I spend too much time on the move to be a reliable contact, and a journeyman has to settle down. You’d be better off looking for a magically populated town; I can point you toward a few of those.”

Ailill bit back on another ‘oh’ and tried not to let his shoulders slump. Surely there were dozens of sorcerers who could give him good answers when he needed them, but this man, Corrival Deuce, was the first one he’d ever met. Ailill wouldn’t have known there were other sorcerers out there if not for him, and he probably would have given out his name to one. What would have happened then? He’d heard the tales.

“What now?” he asked, because he had been tossed into a situation for which he was wholly unprepared (as opposed to a situation in which he was merely ‘partly’), and didn’t have any idea what to do next.

“Now,” Corrival said, draining his cup, “you stay the night and in the morning go back to town, tell your lady there are no werewolves here, and hope that by next month there aren’t any vampires either.”

The thought didn’t fill Ailill with the relief it should have. There was something matter-of-fact in the man’s tone which kept it from being dismissive; more as if he was giving a logical order. Ailill had never taken well to orders. The thing about this one was that he _did_ want to obey it. He blurted, “I won’t be able to sleep.”

It instantly made him feel like a child, but Corrival nodded. “I can imagine that,” he said. “Found it hard my first few times too. I’ll keep watch.”

“I’m not used to sleeping with anyone else in the room.”

“Unless it’s a pretty lady?” Corrival asked with a faint, teasing smile.

Ailill felt his cheeks warm, but smiled, shrugged and said, “Even then.”

Corrival looked at him in thoughtful amusement for a moment. “If you’re looking for excuses _not_ to sleep, why don’t you stop beating around the bush and go right to not sleeping?”

Ailill’s cheeks warmed, he opened his mouth and shut it again, and admitted, “Silence makes me nervous.”

“Why’s that?” Corrival asked, shaking out his can and leaning against the wall. He was humouring him, Ailill could tell, but not in an impatient way. Ailill dissembled by taking a mouthful of his lukewarm tea.

“Mam was always quiet,” he admitted finally. “She died when I was ten, but she didn’t talk much, and my father wasn’t around. She never answered when I asked why.” He smiled ruefully. “And I asked why a lot. She didn’t try to give me an excuse. Or anyone else. She just said nothing.”

He lapsed into silence, looking down into his mug and feeling slightly embarrassed for coming out with something so personal to a complete stranger. It was true, though. He’d been adopted by an older couple without children, and so been a single child used to sleeping alone. Yet he hated silence with a vengeance. It was one of the reasons he was always looking for people to talk to.

Usually he wouldn’t say things like that. It was just that Corrival wasn’t the kind of man you lied to. Not because he’d do something to you if you did—he just made you not _want_ to.

It took a few moments for Ailill to realise that Corrival wasn’t exactly saying anything either, and the young weaver finally looked up to find the sorcerer looking at him with an extremely strange expression in his eyes. Some combination of shock and nostalgia. “Your mama died when you were a boy?”

“Yes,” Ailill said with a shrug. “I’m not the only one. There was a sickness that went around at the time. I was adopted by a couple of weavers. It’s their trade I learned.”

“What did your mama do?”

“I don’t really remember everything,” Ailill admitted. “A lot of maid’s work, but who doesn’t if they get the chance?” Noblewomen were more likely to pay well than peasants.

For a long minute Corrival looked at him. So long, in fact, that Ailill shifted uncomfortably and went back to slurping his tea to make some sound besides the crackle of the fire. Then Corrival said, “Get some sleep.”

He took Ailill’s empty mug from his hands before Ailill could object, turning away to dry both tins on a rag and put them in his bags. Ailill stared at the man’s back, startled, but then he said softly, “Alright.”

Reluctantly but feeling suddenly exhausted, Ailill shuffled around until he found an area where he could stretch out on his back, pulling off enough of his trappings to make himself comfortable and re-rolling his cloak to use as a pillow. As soon as he’d laid down he rolled onto his side, curling up, and closed his eyes. He heard Corrival moving his bags, but soon those sounds ended too, and then Ailill was left to try and ignore the crackle of the fire and the utter silence behind it. The first few seconds alone were interminable.

Then Ailill heard a sound, a low sound, so low he was convinced he was hearing things.

A few seconds later he knew he wasn’t. Corrival was humming the cadence of a lullaby. Singing it, even, so quietly that Ailill couldn’t be sure he was even hearing words except that he knew them himself. He knew them because they were one of the few things he remembered his mother saying regularly, out of the depths of his memory. Because they were something he’d never let his adoptive mother say.

“On the roof of the house there are bright fairies, playing and drinking under the gentle rays of the spring moon; here they come, to call my child out, wishing to draw him into the fairy mound.”

Ailill held his breath and then let it out slowly. With his eyes closed, Corrival’s hum was a vibration in the stone under him. He should have felt insulted. Corrival wasn’t his father, and he wasn’t a baby.

Yet … it wasn’t silence. He didn’t like the silence.

“My child, my heart, sleep soundly and well; may good luck and happiness forever be yours. I’m here at your side praying blessings upon you. Hushaby, hush, you’re not going with them.”

Ailill wasn’t even sure at which verse he fell asleep.

 

When Ailill woke up while being shaken he mumbled, “Just a bit longer, please, Uncle.”

“Wake up and stay quiet, boy,” said a soft but deep voice in his ear, a voice with a vibrating hum that segued out of dreams and into reality. Ailill came awake with a snap, but in those first few disorientated seconds he wondered if he really hadn’t been snatched up by faeries. Then the hardness of the ground beneath him intruded into his awareness and he decided it must have all been real after all.

There was a hand on his shoulder. A warm hand, a _heavy_ hand, and Ailill opened his mouth to ask what was going on. The hand closed over his mouth and Ailill froze. For the first time he came aware that there was something outside the mouth of the cave. It wasn’t movement. Nothing Ailill could tell, anyway. It was more of a … a _smell_. Ailill wouldn’t have known it was there if the mint hadn’t been so pungent.

When Ailill breathed in, he breathed in a mix of crisp mint and something tepid, like water in which a carcass had rotted for so long there almost wasn’t any smell left at all.

Ailill froze, his gaze on the craggy shadows of the cave-entrance, aware of his pounding heart and the weight of Corrival’s body over him. In a distant part of his mind Ailill suspected that if not for the older sorcerer’s presence he’d be quivering like a baby. If the vampire had come in, he probably would have just lay there while it killed him. At any moment, he was certain, it was going to push past the bush and come at them both, and probably slaughter them helplessly in the confines of the hole—

Nothing happened. Seconds ticked by. There was no movement that Ailill could tell, and eventually the difference between mint and vampire dulled. Ailill’s whole body was so tense against the hard cave floor that his muscles began to ache. There was no sound save his ragged breathing and his thudding heart.

It was gone. It had to be gone, surely? Why would it be waiting there? They should move.

Ailill stirred to rise, but Corrival’s weight bore down on him. Stillness broke into motion. Suddenly panicked, Ailill bucked against that weight. His hands flew out for something to strike, pushing at the floor. Corrival grunted in soft surprise and leaned into him; he was like a stone, heavy on Ailill’s back. No matter what Ailill did, how he wriggled, how badly his hands and knees and elbows scraped the ground, no matter how quick and frightened his breath rasped in his lungs, he could not move that weight.

Eventually his strength ran dry. Eventually he fell still and limp against the floor, panting with the exertion. Corrival finally shifted, but his weight didn’t ease. The only thing that changed was the hand that moved from Ailill’s mouth to rest gently on his head. It felt apologetic.

Ailill said nothing. Corrival didn’t explain. They lay there in tense silence for so long that Ailill gave into his exhaustion and dozed. He was dimly aware of the darkness turning grey, half-dreaming of the faintest of rustles outside, may have imagined as Corrival exhaled slowly and yet didn’t move.

Neither of them moved until true sunlight beamed past the bush and the morning birds had begun to chirp. Only then did Corrival roll off Ailill, rising with a groan and steadying himself against the cave’s ceiling.

“It’s safe,” he said.

Without a word Ailill rolled over and used the wall to get to his feet. His whole body felt like week-old bread: brittle but hard at once. His knees shook as he rose, and it took a few swallows before he could muster the spit to ask, “How did you know it was still there?”

“Lesson number two,” Corrival said. “To survive as prey, think like a predator. There is nothing more frightening than an unknown danger. It knew we were in here, and it knew it wouldn’t get past the bush before I killed it. So it waited. It’s a hard thing not to act when you’re afraid. That’s what it was aiming for.”

“How does it know to do that? I mean, they’re—” Ailill’s words died. He wasn’t sure what he meant to say. Were vampires people or animals? Did they think or not?

Corrival looked at him. “Don’t mistake them for people, boy. During the day they walk, talk, reason like any human, but they’re not. Underneath is a monster, one that can’t be tamed, and they fixate on fear.”

Ailill said nothing while Corrival gathered up his bags, and followed as Corrival pushed through the mint-bush. The morning was too bright; Ailill winced and shaded his eyes until he could see without squinting. In the day the forest looked completely different, as things always did, but it seemed _more_ dangerous instead of less. The daylight didn’t erase the last interminable hours before dawn. The daylight didn’t change that somewhere out there was a person masquerading as a beast. And he didn’t know who it was.

“You should head back to town,” Corrival said gruffly without looking, hitching his bags up onto his back. “I’ll stay up here, see if I can’t find the other one tonight. Pretty sure there aren’t more than the two.”

Ailill opened his mouth, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, so he closed it. Corrival was already moving off and Ailill watched him go, for the second time in his life feeling as if he was being left behind.

 

Blearily Ailill rubbed his eyes, stifling a yawn as he glanced out the inn’s window. By the time he’d gotten back to town it had been well past mid-morning. The innkeeper had registered his surprise that Ailill was still alive as he passed. Ailill just hauled himself upstairs to his room, fell into his bed and slept until nearly nightfall. He’d barely had time to be thankful that he’d paid for a private room instead of a public bed.

Now it was too late to think about leaving. Or going out into the woods. Both options, alarmingly, pulled equally at his mind, and Ailill had been uncharacteristically silent as he took his meal in the inn’s main room. He was so preoccupied that he almost didn’t notice the woman who stopped at his table. Almost.

She was young enough, and rather pretty, and looking down at him as though trying to place his face. Summoning a winsome grin took far less effort than it probably should have, but what the hell. Hadn’t he earned a distraction? “Good evening, my lady.”

She laughed and at once Ailill felt better. At least he could still make a pretty woman laugh. “Hardly a lady. I’m sorry; I was trying to place you. You were at the markets three days ago, weren’t you? The weaver?”

Oh, he’d been noticed. There could be a few reasons for that, and from the way she was glancing at him sidelong, under her lashes, Ailill could guess what at least one of them was. The first thing Ailill did was check her fingers; no ring. Probably a widow, then. She had a nice smile, too; a dimpling smile. Lord willing, she’d have good teeth as well. Nothing ruined a dalliance faster than bad teeth. And a dalliance was just what he needed, Ailill decided. Forget Aohbinn. Forget her crazy requests and manipulative beauty. What he needed was a good, one-off tumble with a pretty woman.

“I might just have been,” he agreed with his most charming grin. The woman’s dimples deepened as she smiled, pressing her fingers to her lips.

“I thought I’d missed you,” she confessed, lowering her hand. “I meant to buy something from you, but I didn’t have enough coin at the time. I do now, though; I just made a delivery to the kitchen.” She lifted the basket in her hands. “I don’t suppose you have any weavings left? In your room, perhaps?”

Ailill’s grin broadened and there may have been relief in it. This night promised to go better than the last.

“I do believe I do, at that,” he agreed, rising and leaving some coin on the table, glad he’d made the effort to change his clothes before he came downstairs. He offered the woman his arm. She laughed and took it, and he led her upstairs.

“Let me just get out my weaves,” he said with roguish innocence as he let her in and followed after, closing the door, lighting a lantern and untying his cravat as he moved toward his belongings. She may not have a husband, but a father or brother were both equal options and at least presenting the veneer of her intent meant there’d be no need to lie about the cause of her presence there to begin with. Just … mislead a little.

She laughed again. “Oh, I’m looking forward to it.”

Still grinning, cravat hanging loose around his neck, Ailill bent to lay his bundle of weaves flat and unroll them. Only … something was wrong. It was nightfall. What was anyone doing making deliveries at nightfall?

And there was something Corrival had said which kept nudging at Ailill’s mind. Something when Ailill had asked how the vampire had known they were there, and Corrival had said that … what had he said?

That vampires hunted by fear. That they used it to catch people. Did that mean they tracked with it too?

_To survive as prey, think like a predator._

When was prey most vulnerable? On its own ground, guard down, and alone. How to lure prey away from others? Give it something it wanted.

A chill ran down Ailill’s back. His mouth went dry and his skin felt clammy, his heart pounding in his chest. He looked up, saw the horizon dim through the window, saw the shadow on the wall cast by the lantern.

Saw the silhouette of the pretty woman reach up and heard the wet slide of flesh as she tore off her skin.

Ailill lunged for the knife on the dresser and spun; the vampire struck him like a carriage, slamming him against the wall with a blow that took all his air. The half-drawn knife hit the floor with a dual clatter of blade and sheath, but he wasn’t sure where and didn’t have time to figure it out before agony erupted in his neck, piercing all the way through him. He couldn’t cry out; he couldn’t do anything.

Weakly Ailill clawed at the vampire, but it was like forged iron. Immovable. His heartbeat filled his body, loud and roaring, and then the strength holding him up pulled away. Ailill sank to the floor, gasping. His limbs tingled and a haze clogged his mind. Everything felt slow. He tried to talk and only a groan came out.

_‘Come with me.’_

It wasn’t a voice. Not a voice he heard with his ears. It was a demand, a need, an impulse which felt and _smelled_ like the woman. Ailill tried to say that he didn’t really want to go anywhere with her, thank you, but he staggered to his feet, leaning back against the wall. The world spun around him; he blinked and tried to focus. Everything looked like a medley of colours, and when he inhaled he smelled blood, delicious and repulsive at once.

The vampire was already turning away, but the desire to follow hadn’t abated. Worse, there was something else behind it. An imperative. An intent.

_‘Come with me and help me kill them, all the vermin, all their children, help me kill them and we will revel—’_

Something deep inside Ailill screamed that this was bad, this was very bad, but the mistress moved toward the door and he wanted to follow—he _had_ to follow, he belonged to her—so he pushed off the wall.

She stopped, her head jerking. The doorframe shattered inward with an explosion of timber and nails, and although part of Ailill knew that evading those kinds of things was a very good idea he still couldn’t muster the urgency to actually move. Wood shards cut his face and he didn’t even care.

The slayer charged through the doorway in a billow of dust. The mistress hissed and leapt, but the slayer twisted and thrust out a hand, and she was flung back into the ceiling.

_‘Kill it kill it killitkillitkillitkillit—’_

Ailill lunged, a flame in his fist. The slayer’s head and hand snapped almost in the same movement, and the air lifted Ailill up, tossing him back into the bed. It was enough that the invisible barrier against the mistress broke; she flung herself into the slayer, knocking them both off their feet. He got his sheath up in time to block her claws and kicked hard, twisting the sheath to throw her off him with a blast of air. Ailill rolled off the bed onto the floor and his hand came down on something sharp.

The pain pierced the fog in his mind enough for him to recognise his knife. He stared at it, because his knife was important somehow, important because it was a weapon and he needed to kill something—

_‘Killitkillitkillitkillitkillitkillit—’_

_Kill what?_

He picked up the knife and turned, using the bed as a crutch. He breathed in and smelled blood, and it did something to him. It made his stomach curl and his mouth rush with spit. He lifted his hand to press the cut to his lips. It was _glorious_ , like water after a long day’s work, sweet and thick like honey.

Someone shouted something but he didn’t hear the words through the rush, not until something hit him and he slammed into the wall. This wasn’t a weightless mass, not just air; it was a twisting form, writhing on him but unable to rise. And then it did, yanking something out of his hand, something sharp. The knife.

Blade still caught in her side, the mistress rolled and spun like a coiled spring, claws lashing out at him. Steel flashed and the mistress’s head rolled, her bald, hairless body slumping to the ground. There was blood everywhere, all over the wooden floor and Ailill’s clothes. He watched it with fascination as it pooled toward him, watched it and _wanted_ it with a roaring hunger.

The head burst into flames. Something heavy came down on him, holding him to the floor. Instinctively he pushed back against it; for an instant it lightened and then came back heavier than before. Something was snarling, the sound high and inhuman.

Words. Someone shouting. Movement at the door. The slayer spun, his hand outstretched and blade drawn. It flashed in the firelight. Ailill inhaled and smelled heartbeats and fear, there and gone.

“Damn it!”

The slayer was there, right there, and Ailill’s whole body quivered as he tried to attack, but he couldn’t move under that pressure. He couldn’t think, couldn’t think about anything but the blood on his clothes and the pulse in the slayer’s neck. Then there was a cup at his lips, a cup filled to the brim with that sweet scent. He drank eagerly before he could register that there was something else in there, something sharp and tangy, something that made him bristle.

It was sweet and acrid and it hit his gut like a punch, and then he was on his face, coughing and retching. That acrid stench made his head pound, cutting through the fog and making it deepen at once. Deepen in a different way; less as if he couldn’t think, more as if he was too tired. As if he was hurt.

Ailill drew in a deep, ragged breath and coughed once more, and then whimpered without meaning. The smell of blood was in his nose; it was thick and cloying, overwhelming, and it made bile rise.

“They’re in there!”

The slayer— _Corrival_ , his ringing mind provided—cursed, close by. Ailill felt hands on his shoulders, felt someone pulling him up. He struggled, trying to help or fight, he wasn’t sure which, but couldn’t do much except support his own weight for a few seconds. It didn’t matter anyway; he didn’t stop moving. One moment he was on the floor. Then the world spun around him and he was in someone’s arms, pulled over a shoulder. Ailill groaned.

“Hold on, lad.”

Ailill sagged onto that shoulder, breathing ragged and fast. The room spun. He saw a bloodstained floor, saw a white-skinned body and a smouldering head. They were moving and he saw the doorframe, saw men’s legs and heard shouts that made his head ring. Voices. Words being exchanged, loud and frightened, and then someone hitting a wall. The voices grew high-pitched and then they were moving again, everything turning dizzily.

Ailill closed his eyes and let the dizziness take him.

 

Everything was a medley of pain and movement and more pain. The world spun slowly around him, even in darkness. He tried to open his eyes; the brightness seared them and he cried out, trying to turn away from the light. Something resisted him, made him turn back, but the light dimmed.

Hot. Hot and restless, the energy in him at once vibrating and sluggish. With a moan he shifted, trying to fight off the weight on him making the heat worse. It vanished, but a moment later it was back.

He was parched. His throat was in agony. “Please?” he begged, not knowing exactly what for except that he was so _thirsty_. It lit up inside him, an all-consuming need and the source of that never-ending heat. When a cup was put to his lips he drank something bitter and salty. It was like ice the whole way down. He coughed and spluttered, choked and heaved, but the insistent entity made him drink it all.

His body rebelled. Over and over he shook, heat and cold warring inside him. He clenched; he cried out; the world turned overhead, a wash of sounds and colours all blended into one. Time was meaningless.

Eventually it eased. Eventually he was allowed to rest, limp and breathing ragged. His body tingled and his head pounded, but the bonfire had burned itself out. Ailill let the world go and drifted. For a long time, he drifted. Occasionally he was woken and made to drink. The first time he was too tired to rebel and tried anyway, but that awful bitter liquid never made a return. These drinks were warm and sweet, and they made him feel less cold inside. After each one he fell easily into a deep, dreamless sleep.

It was the hum which brought him back the next time. That idle hum in a deep voice, a song he recognised and hadn’t heard in years until recently. He couldn’t quite recognise it, even though he knew it meant something, but for the moment was just content to listen. It lulled him closer and closer to awareness, and by degrees he was able to register things around him.

The ground, hard and comfortable at once. The cushioning object under his head and the cloak over him, the deep haul of air in his chest with every wonderful breath. The crackle of a fire; the smell of pine smoke. The rustle of the wind in the leaves and the scrape of stone on steel. That ever-present hum.

Ailill opened his eyes, slow because they were so heavy, and looked to the source of the song. He saw a silhouette in the darkness, close enough to touch but leaning back against a tree, hands moving in a slow, steady rhythm while sharpening a sword. The hum vibrated in the air, against Ailill’s skin.

The weaver closed his eyes and slept, and dreamed sweet nothings that faded as soon as they’d come.

When Ailill next awoke it was night again, or maybe still, and this time he was without the dragging weariness. He simply woke up and felt every ache and pain, every pebble in his back, and while he felt _rested_ , it was the sort of rested that came after a long illness. The weak-as-a-newborn kind.

When Ailill sorted through his memories he found them a muddle of exhaustion and delirium, and decided to leave them alone while he attended to other matters. Firstly, it was night. There was a fire, but it had all but burned out. The silhouette against the tree was still and breathing deep.

Ailill’s back ached. The cushion under his head had hardened. The cloak itched. Most importantly, he needed to take care of some business. The only problem was that he was nude under the cloak. After a moment Ailill decided that he felt too much like wrung-out laundry to care, provided he could get up and walk a few steps around a tree without waking Corrival. The weaver rolled over and almost instantly had to bite his tongue against the pain that lashed down his neck and shoulder. His groan came out strangled.

For an interminable amount of time he lay there, half-curled and face pressed into the pillow, struggling not to whimper. The pain swept all through his head and deep into his chest, taking all his air. The sensation occupied every moment until he was startled by a hand on his head, and his breathing hitched.

Slowly the pain eased into a throb. A throb that was still sharp, especially when Ailill moved, so he chose not to. Instead he just lay there, panting, eyes closed and letting the hand in his hair ground him.

“What was in your head, idiot?” Corrival said quietly but gruffly, with an edge Ailill couldn’t define.

“Needed to take a piss,” Ailill mumbled. What was the point of worrying about dignity now? Corrival had seen much worse over the time Ailill couldn’t remember. Corrival had seen him bitten by a _vampire_. Ailill’s hand came up to rest on the heavy bandage in the crook of his neck and across his shoulder.

“Do you still?” Corrival asked, and Ailill felt a surge of gratitude at the tact about what he was really asking.

“Yes.”

“Alright. Don’t try to move this time. You’ve been through a wringer.” Ailill very obediently did not move as Corrival picked him up, blanket and all, and moved him to a tree about ten feet out of camp. Just the mere act of being picked up told Ailill how weak he was. He’d never have made it to his feet on his own. He might have fallen asleep again in that short distance, except that his need was just a little too urgent to overcome.

Corrival set him by the tree and left him to his privacy, and a few minutes later Ailill called for him, more plaintively than he meant. Without a word Corrival returned, picked him up, and took him back to the fire, laying him down so gently that Ailill drowsily wondered if the man had lied about having any other children.

“Go back to sleep, lad.”

This seemed like a good idea, and Ailill had every intention of doing just that, except that at the last minute something very important occurred to him. “Corrival?”

“Mmm?”

“Am I a vampire?” Ailill’s voice came out small and vulnerable, even to his own ears. The rest of the memories might still be a haze, but thanks to the pain he now very much remembered the vampire in his room and the sensation of fangs sinking into his flesh.

There came a snort. “It’s night-time, boy. You felt the urge to rip off your skin yet?”

Oh. Right. “Just checking your memory, old man,” Ailill mumbled as he drifted off, a tiny smile on his lips.

 

Ailill slept soundly, this time able to recall some of his dreams—enough to tell that some were nightmares. They segued into each other, never enough to wake him up or do more than disturb him before fleeing.

When he woke up properly, he felt a little less like wrung-out laundry and more like beaten laundry. He was hungry. It was daylight, but the clearing was in perpetual shadow under the trees, for which he was glad. He was less glad to find he once again had an urgent need, and this time Corrival was nowhere in sight.

Ailill took stock. He ached and badly, but it was more the ache of honest exertion, and while he still felt tired, he didn’t feel as if he was about to drop off again just yet. He had a vague impression of having done that an awful lot in the very recent past.

Gingerly he shifted, testing his body. His neck throbbed and he hissed, but the pain didn’t paralyse him like it had before. The next step was actually getting to his feet, which he did carefully and slowly. Rolling onto his side, levering himself up to his knees, wrapping the cloak around him, using the tree as a pole. By the time he got that far he was exhausted and his head was pounding in tandem to the vampire bite.

He chose to rest, leaning against the tree and panting, locking his knees so he didn’t fall. He was so preoccupied that he almost didn’t hear Corrival’s footsteps, and in fact only looked up at the sound of the other man’s voice, startled but managing not to flinch.

“Afternoon.”

Ailill watched as the slayer poured an armful of firewood to the ground beside the fire. Corrival looked up and raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to stay there all day, lad?”

At which point Ailill decided to stop dawdling and limped slowly off into the trees. Or, well, leaned on each tree until he couldn’t see the camp anymore. He didn’t find the same tree as before, but his knees were shaking so he didn’t bother trying, either. By the time he got back to camp he felt as though he was about to fall over at any minute, and the only reason he didn’t just collapse onto the pallet was because of the never-ceasing throb at his neck. Easing himself down slowly was a lot more difficult than he thought, and the only reason he made it was because Corrival caught him at the last minute.

Ailill shoved his face into the squashed bag of clothes and groaned self-pityingly.

“Roll over.” Ailill gave himself a moment and another groan, and then obeyed, turning onto his back so Corrival could reach his neck. “Hungry?”

“I _was_ ,” Ailill mumbled. Still, too, except that the pain was making him feel nauseated as well.

“Good sign.”

Ailill made a sound and fell silent, content to breathe while Corrival changed the bandage. He was telling himself that he didn’t want to know when his mouth blurted without his permission, “How bad is it?”

Corrival’s motions didn’t hesitate. “Not as bad as some I’ve seen. It’ll scar, but shouldn’t be too visible unless you’re looking for it. She must have liked you.”

The amusement in his tone prompted Ailill to mutter, “I liked her too—until she ripped off her own skin.”

Corrival snorted and Ailill lapsed back into silence. He was tired but his body was still resisting sleep, which meant he had ample time to wait for the memories to come crawling out of the fog. The woman. His room. Being bitten. Try as he might, everything after that resisted his attempts to recall them. He remembered sliding to the ground. Remembered still being alive. Remembered—

_‘Come with me.’_

A chill overtook Ailill and made him shudder so violently that he felt something in his neck tear, and cried out at the sharp pain. Corrival muttered a curse and put something against his shoulder; the pressure made Ailill have to bite his lip, riding out the pain with little whimpers. “What happened _there_?”

“I’m not a vampire,” Ailill mumbled, half begging for confirmation of the sleepy reassurance from last night.

A hand rested lightly in his hair. Grounding. “You’re not a vampire, lad.”

“She bit me.”

“That she did.”

“I heard her voice in my head. Only I didn’t. It wasn’t a voice. I just—I _had_ to be with her—”

His words tumbled over each other like lost and frightened puppies. The more he spoke, the more his memories cleared. That driving need. Corrival bursting through the door. Not _recognising_ him as Corrival. Attacking him— _wanting_ to. Finding the knife and cutting himself and the sweet smell of his life’s blood—

Ailill’s stomach heaved. Pain radiated from his shoulder, but he couldn’t cry out or do anything but ride the wracks in his body and the pain which brought tears to his eyes. Quickly Corrival rolled him to his side.

When the retching finally subsided Ailill collapsed back into the pallet, unable to contain the whimpers of misery or the tears making their way down his cheeks. His gut hurt, his throat hurt, his chest and shoulder hurt; he tasted nothing but bile. His eyes were closed, but he could sense Corrival over and around him, washing away what little he’d brought up, putting something filled with water on the fire, coming back with some clean bandages. Ailill turned his face away when the man offered him some water. After a pause Corrival didn’t argue and went to bandage him again. Ailill didn’t move, couldn’t even look up.

But eventually he spoke, his voice hoarse. “I would have killed you if I could.”

“It would have taken more than a newly Infected boy to kill me.”

Ailill didn’t really doubt that, but the part that made him feel sick was that Ailill had _wanted_ to kill Corrival, with every fibre of his being. He’d _wanted_ to tear the man apart. _Wanted_ to drink the man’s lifeblood. The memory of that overpowering desire almost made him heave again. “That isn’t what I mean.”

There was a pause, and then Corrival said softly, “I know.”

“Have you ever—?” The words dried up in Ailill’s mouth, and part of him wished he hadn’t asked.

“Been Infected? No. But the man who taught me about slaying had been, for over a day. It’s a disease that consumes you, and not everyone can survive the cure. Most of those that do … change. He was already a broken man by the time I met him.”

A broken man. Ailill tried to imagine being under the vampire’s thrall for more than a few minutes. For an hour, a whole _day_. His imagination shied from the thought. A few minutes as one of those _things_ was a few minutes too many. “How did you cure me?”

“I wouldn’t say it was a ‘cure’,” Corrival said, and Ailill hissed at the sting as the man put something on the wound. “A strong man whose sire is dead can fight off the Infection if it’s given something else to fight. Vampires are allergic to salted water. The first thing you drank was the vampire’s blood and saltwater. After that, just the water. The Infection reacted to that and gave you the opening to fight it off.”

Ailill shuddered. So that’s what that awful-tasting liquid had been. “It hurt.”

“It would. You had a battle going on in your body, lad. Are you ready to wash out your mouth now?”

After a moment’s hesitation Ailill forewent nodding and said softly, “Yes.”

He felt Corrival’s arm under his back and raised himself up on one elbow. The motion was dizzying, but in a moment he was resting against a tree. Ailill winced in the day’s brightness, but submitted when Corrival lifted the mug of water for him. He rinsed a few times, spitting after each one, but the taste lingered.

“I doubt you feel any more like eating, but how about some tea?”

“Please.” Ailill rested his head back against the tree as Corrival moved toward the pot on the fire. Too exhausted to move, not tired enough to sleep. This was a pain. Some sleep would’ve been nice, if only to escape the memories still lurking. “I remember you talking to someone.”

Corrival paused to glance over his shoulder. “That was the innkeeper and a few of the townsfolk.”

The townspeople had seen him Infected. Ailill’s heart sank, the fragments of memories patching together, and he looked automatically for anything familiar. “My things?”

“You’re the only thing I could carry,” Corrival said gruffly, and Ailill’s shoulders slumped. He’d had his purse on him, so Corrival must have it, but it wouldn’t be enough to pay for a new loom. And without a loom he couldn’t get more coin. Which, for someone of his limited skills, left only one place to go.

“Suppose it’s off to one of the factories for me, then.”

“Or,” Corrival said without looking over, “you could come with me.”

At first Ailill wasn’t sure he’d heard the words, and blinked wordlessly in Corrival’s direction. The man still wasn’t looking up, but Ailill was fairly sure it didn’t require that much concentration to steep tea, even in a campsite. Then the words sank in and Ailill’s gut ballooned with the warmth of excitement. He opened his mouth to accept. “Why? Before, you were going to just send me off on my own.”

He winced and flushed. Corrival looked up, caught the look, and smiled. It was an amused but sad smile, and fleeting. “Before, you had your own means. Now you don’t, and it’s my fault. Vampires live in packs or pairs. This was a pair. I should’ve known the other one would go for the prey whose fear it could smell.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ailill mumbled, his face still warm. Corrival shrugged.

“I could’ve cottoned on earlier and I didn’t. Now you’ve got a few stitches of bloodied clothing and some coin to your name. I wouldn’t like me if I sent you off just because I thought you were too much effort.”

“You could’ve just killed me,” Ailill pointed out, and with an exasperated look Corrival lobbed a stick at him.

“Don’t give me good reason, boy.”

Sheepishly Ailill grinned, and then for a few minutes there was comfortable silence as Corrival finished steeping the tea and poured it evenly between the mug and the tiny pot. Then Ailill said casually, “So I guess this means I need to learn a bit of magic? If I’m going to be slaying vampires?”

To be honest the thought of having to hunt them made his stomach flip-flop unpleasantly and left his mouth dry with dread. It was a strange contrast to the lightness in his chest and the tingle in his limbs.

“I’m as much a mercenary as a slayer,” Corrival said. “I only slay because someone has to, but I’ve got to earn coin somehow. Of course, you don’t need magic to swing a sword.” The last was said so casually that Ailill’s emotions nearly flipped and he was terrified the other man wasn’t going to teach him magic at all. Then Corrival looked up and grinned, and Ailill laughed, half in relief and half just because it was funny.

“But still,” he persisted with a smile on his face. “I’m going to need to know magic. Especially if we meet other sorcerers. And I’m going to need a name, aren’t I?”

“ _If_ we meet other sorcerers,” said Corrival, rising and bringing the mugs over, each wrapped in a rag to stave off the heat. “You might be too embarrassing.”

Ailill grinned but didn’t rise to the bait. “I’ve already got one.”

“Oh?” Corrival lifted an eyebrow, holding the mug out with the air of a parent humouring a child. “Do tell.”

“Erskine.” Ailill turned his hand over to show his bandaged palm. “Erskine Ravel.” Corrival stared at the bandage and Erskine watched him, his heart pounding oddly slow with apprehension. Then Corrival lifted his gaze to Erskine’s and smiled, handing him the mug and lifting his own.

“Here’s to you and the next week you’re going to spend lying on that same bit of hard ground, Ravel.”


	2. The stray

“She’s a good one, all right. I just don’t have the pasture for this many head.”

_‘Please, let him take her. Cow who can’t produce is useless to me.’_

“Ahh, yeah, that hits the spot.”

_‘Damn, the shit here’s awful.’_

“Of course I’m going! Wouldn’t miss it.”

_‘This is a disaster. I can’t believe they were both invited … How am I going to get out of this one?’_

“Hey, pretty lady, how’s about another round of drinks?”

_‘Gawd, she’s ugly as sin, but she’s got enough chest to be worth a tumble.’_

“Sure thing, handsome, be right with you.”

_‘Ugh, pock-eyed old pervert. Probably got crabs too. I can skip this one; the old man’s been generous lately.’_

Máenach bowed his head over his untouched drink so that his hood could hide him a little more—though there was really no more it could hide him. It still made him a feel just a touch more in control, in a world in which he had no real control at all. His hands trembled on the tabletop; he clasped them together more firmly. It didn’t help, but he didn’t dare bring out his beads for the sake of the comfort they’d give him. Someone might see them and wonder what a man like him was doing here, so near to—

He stopped that thought quite deliberately and with an ease of practise, in case there were any demons nearby who might overhear and try to make such a discovery happen, but that left him at the mercy of the voices around him. Máenach took a slow, deep breath, held it, let it out again. He needed to meditate. He’d needed to meditate for days now, the voices sharper and louder the longer he didn’t, but every time he closed his eyes he saw that night. And then his concentration would be lost.

No wonder he had never been let out, he thought with bitter resignation. It didn’t matter how hard he’d tried; he hadn’t been able to control the voices even while safe and cloistered. Here, in the real world, he stood no chance at all.

Still he tried. One breath. Two. Three. Four. It wasn’t a complete solution, but slowly most of the voices faded to an inaudible whisper in the background—all except for those few which were loudest to begin with and had been drowned by the hubbub of the rest.

 _‘—was there, you idiot, I saw the fire and the way the whole place collapsed, there’s no_ way _there were survivors—’_

“Someone who got out, eh? Doesn’t seem likely, but stranger things have happened, I guess.”

Máenach froze as those two voices were lifted from the din. The topic was so familiar, so personal, that when Máenach inhaled sharply he smelled thick black smoke, heard the shatter of wood splintering beneath the groping fingers of an inferno. He couldn’t even tell whose memories they were. It didn’t really matter.

They’d found him. The demons. Taunting him with that night. Máenach found himself trembling violently, so violently his milk had spilled. His breathing was short and panicked. He needed to get out of this place. Now, quickly. Before they came upon him fully.

 _And then what?_ whispered a voice he was almost certain was his own. He halted in the process of rising, his head bowed and tremor hidden by his robes except in the shake of his hand resting on the table. _What’s the point? Why fight any longer, a cursed man like you?_

 _Suicide is a sin,_ he told himself, but the assertion had the well-treaded tenor of a lie clung-to and no longer quite believed.

_Not if someone does it for you. Then the sin’s on them._

Máenach stood there, immobilised by two opposing ideas. Then the sheer proximity to a voice speaking directly of him made his head snap up, his eyes widening from within his hood. A thought clinical, curious, and certain.

_‘—hooded and cloaked, clasping his hands like a monk in prayer, and he reacted to our conversation just now, I’m certain of it—’_

Like a bowshot Máenach turned and made for the nearest door, right in the darkest corner of the tavern, too frightened to even react to the surprise behind him. That surprise shifted easily to determination, and it followed him. Máenach kept his head down, shouldering past someone and not daring to apologise lest someone hear and remember his voice later. He slammed through the door into the deserted back-alley, feeling the grim intent of pursuit on his heels, and ran for the alley’s end.

Fire burst in the air before him, slamming into stone that exploded with coal-like chips. Máenach instinctively tried to stop, arms raised to protect his face. Something struck him, something without weight but with definite force—not hard, but enough that he hit the opposite wall and not the already dying fire. He still felt the sting of cuts on his forehead.

Shaking, Máenach sank against the brick, scrabbling in his habit for his cross.

_‘—terrified, the poor man. How did he know I was there? I never meant to frighten him like this—’_

The cascading voice felt … strange. Máenach kept his cross upraised in trembling fists. He’d have recited a prayer or a warding if he could only find his voice, but his throat was too tight for speech. Instead he only pressed his back to the wall, breathing almost too fast for air to be found, and waited for another attack.

 _‘Look at him; he_ must _have seen something. He’s acting like I’m going to hurt him at any moment. I won’t hurt you, lad—’_

“Liar!”

The word burst out before Máenach could stop it, strangled though it was. The voice cut off in a surge of surprise that seemed to suspend everything. The air, the night-sounds, the shadows; the only thing that seemed real was Máenach’s pounding heart.

_‘Why would he say that? I never spoke. Unless—’_

Dual dawning realisations met and overcame Máenach’s usual fear with a sheer terror that paralysed him completely. He’d responded to one of the voices. It didn’t matter that he’d been too frightened to tell it hadn’t been real—he had replied to it, given it leeway, an opening, and now this one would never leave him alone—

Footsteps approached and someone knelt by him, someone in a fine cloak. Máenach couldn’t see beyond that; there was a white haze over his vision and his chest was beginning to hurt, his breathing too fast to gain any air at all. Weights landed on his shoulders. Hands. Máenach flinched and tried to pull away, and a voice, a dual-toned voice at once there and not, washed over him.

_“Don’t fight it, lad, just take a breath and hold it. Don’t struggle, don’t force anything to come, and you’ll be fine—”_

It was so oddly close that Máenach didn’t have a choice but to listen. He didn’t even consider _not_ , in fact. Thought met intent met action, and the voice’s intensity was such that Máenach instinctively obeyed. He held his breath and felt the thunder of his heart in his body.

_“Now release. Slowly.”_

The exhale was more of a ragged gasp, Máenach’s head spinning with dizziness and encouragement.

_“That’s it. Just like that. Take a breath, now, and hold it for ten counts. That’s right. Let it out, go on.”_

Slowly Máenach’s raspy breathing steadied. He realised dimly that he was clutching his cross to his chest, his whole body trembling. A hand was on the back of his neck, massaging gently and encouraging his head down, his red hair on display. Noticeable. Memorable. His heart slammed back against his ribs and he tried to pull away, but the hand on his neck tightened.

“No. Stay.”

_‘—almost can’t believe this. This sort of magic is only meant to be a myth, but this man has it, I’m certain.’_

The duality of the voices separated, became similar but individual once more. Máenach let out a ragged sob, every fibre of his being tense with the anticipation of pain, damnation, death.

“Please,” he begged. “Please end it quickly.”

The voice drew to a still point, undisturbed by any background whisper, a clear silent bell of disbelief and compassion.

 _‘Oh, my dear boy. I’m not going to hurt you,’_ it whispered, and Máenach bowed his head, shaking it in denial.

“Look at me.” A gentle but firm hand took his chin and forced his head up, and for the first time Máenach looked upon the face of his pursuer. It was a man, an ordinary-looking man who appeared in his early thirties, with sandy-brown hair and a neatly-trimmed beard. _‘You can hear my thoughts, can’t you?’_

It was the same voice. The same voice, spoken aloud and not, complementary. Máenach squeezed his eyes shut, taking controlled breaths as fast as he could manage while still being so. “My Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as in Heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we—”

 _‘—forgive those who trespass against us.’_ The sound of that voice made Máenach’s eyes snap open, made him draw in a sharp breath. He looked into the face of the man before him, whose lips didn’t move except to smile gently. _‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.’_

“Amen,” Máenach whispered through a throat too tight to really let out any sound at all. He swallowed hard, staring, still frightened but now half mesmerised as well. A demon would never pray in the Lord’s name. Therefore, not a demon.

_No, simply a poor soul you infect with your unhallowed presence._

Máenach flinched and looked down, words expelled on a teary breath. “Forgive me.”

 _“For what?”_ Puzzlement. A duality which hid from him whether the man had spoken the words or if Máenach had—

If Máenach had read his mind.

“I can’t control it,” he said with a half-sob, an indrawn breath. “I can’t—I’ve _tried_. The demon’s curse—I’m sorry.”

 _‘A_ demon’s _curse?’_ A wondering thought, filled with distaste—Máenach hunched inward—and disdain. _‘Poor lad’s been hard done by to believe such a pack of ridiculous lies.’_

The idea was so incongruous, such an antithesis to everything Máenach had known, that he released a short watery laugh. “What else could it be?”

“A gift from God.”

Stillness. Such utter stillness that Máenach looked at the man and saw no mockery. _‘I’ve searched for God for a long time. I may not know if He’s real, but I_ do _know that this boy’s magic. He has to be. And naturally, he has people telling him it’s evil, because they’re ignorant and close-minded, and don’t know any better—and you heard all of that, didn’t you?’_

It felt different, Máenach realised suddenly. Or sounded different, or however it was happening. The voice felt different when it spoke directly to him, and not just as if he was merely overhearing a conversation to which he shouldn’t be privy. As if it was a private conversation just for him. Hastily, wordlessly, Máenach nodded. All this was so far outside his field of experience that he almost didn’t feel afraid at the fact that he was acknowledging it. He just felt dazed.

There were questions written all over his face, ones of which he was only aware because the man could see them. How could this be so? Why did this man believe it so strongly? Who _was_ he? All of these, bound up in fear and disbelief and the smallest rooting of hope.

The man smiled gently, consideration in his eyes. Consideration, not calculation. “Can you enter a mind at will?”

Because he was so dazed, so out of depth, Máenach answered. “I—don’t know.”

He’d never tried. His earliest memory was of being a boy, almost a babe, and having the monks tell him control was of the utmost importance. Control, for a damned soul such as his, _might_ be enough to earn him his Lord’s mercy.

“Try,” said the man, and tilted Máenach’s head up until there was no choice but to look him squarely in the eyes. _‘I give you my permission. Look into me and know that I’m no liar.’_

Máenach hadn’t even recovered from the initial shock. This one floored him completely. He stared wordlessly at the man. The stranger squeezed the back of Máenach’s neck, but Máenach didn’t need the encouragement to believe. All his life, he had heard the unspoken whispers of those at the monastery, no matter how gently or sternly or cautiously they treated him.

Demon-touched, their minds had said, even while their faces and voices lied and told him there was an escape for him. Demon-touched. Possessed. Damned. Hopeless.

There was none of that in this man. Nothing but a threading wonder, a curiosity, a fascination and confidence and compassion.

 _‘—all he needs is to see something that doesn’t rely on his own damnation to do so, to_ believe _, that there is so much more out there than just what always stopped at the confines of his monastery—’_

Without another moment’s hesitation Máenach flung aside all his restraint, gazing into this man’s eyes. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to reach forward in a way that wasn’t physical and open the book that was this stranger’s mind.

His name was Eachan Meritorious, but it wasn’t; it was a name he took to serve as a shield. The knowledge of it, the existence of it, seemed to pulse a warning which turned Máenach aside from seeing what that other name was. It turned him aside and all at once he was engulfed in a flood, one too strong to resist.

His name was Eachan Meritorious and he was two-hundred-and-nineteen and he had been born in the southern side of the island to farmers who had thought their son very strange to be so interested in letters; he had been apprenticed to a scribe; had found he could do things with candle-flames no one else could do; had nearly burned down his master’s office and been thrown out and—

He believed the pursuit of God was just and worthy but had become jaded by the lack of His presence in all the things he had witnessed; in the children slaughtered woman raped men murdered people butchered—

He had met sorcerers, others like him, men and women who could do things for which they were hunted; he spoke to them, found them bitter and fearful and apathetic to the notion that they should be at all involved in mortal lives or indeed care at all about how their society evolved, a class of superhumans who squandered their lives and talents and—

—trustjoygriefamusementdisappointmentangerdisdaindetermination—

Pain exploded in Máenach’s face and he gasped, drawing in the deep, heaving breath of a drowning man. Instinctively he put a hand to his stinging cheek, his head throbbing at the temples, but in a way more like exertion than a blow. When he lifted his head, breathing hard, he found Eachan with his hand raised, his face pale. That hand lowered slightly, but not completely, and Eachan’s voice was soft as he asked, “Can you hear me now?”

_‘Good God, that was close. You should never have suggested that, you idiot; untrained sorcerers with born talents run the risk of overwhelming themselves early. You are a great fool, Eachan Meritorious—’_

For several moments Máenach stared, dazed, uncertain whether that thought _was_ his or, indeed, who he was at all. Then that hand lifted again and he summoned the words from somewhere. “Yes. I—I—I hear you. Yes.”

Eachan exhaled, long and slow, and finally lowered his hand completely. “Good. That’s … lucky. I thought—your eyes—” He shook his head, staring and shaken, and Máenach’s daze began to ease enough to let fear begin to seep through once more. Then Eachan closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath before opening them again. “What did you see?”

“I—” Máenach swallowed hard. “There was—too much. I couldn’t … I saw … did you really nearly set the Gallarus Oratory on fire?” The last was blurted out, a mixture of incredulity and horror. Eachan blinked in surprise, but then threw back his head and laughed.

“Yes, I did. I was a young man and my master had an office there, and I was experimenting with fire.” Then he caught his breath and looked at Máenach, and there was something in his eyes. A mixture of things Máenach half recognised. “You saw that?” Without daring to speak, Máenach nodded. “But you didn’t see details?” Máenach shook his head. Eachan exhaled slowly. “The way you looked—as if the universe was in your eyes and you were drowning. You really could see all of me, couldn’t you?”

_‘This is incredible. He really did read my mind—could have read nearly anything, I’ll wager, except he’s never done that before and the human mind is so very complex. No wonder he was almost overwhelmed—’_

Awe. Shock. Fear. _Fascination._ Máenach nodded once more, still huddled against the wall and gripping his crucifix, but on the edge of a precipice, on the edge of falling off into something he couldn’t begin to understand—but which, all of a sudden, he wanted. Greatly.

“And what did you see?” Eachan asked softly. Máenach opened his mouth, closed it, swallowed hard. His own thoughts—he was almost certain they were his own—were at once too fast and indescribable. They moved in all directions, were incapable of following just one track.

For the first time in his life, Máenach was being told he wasn’t evil. No matter how much he didn’t want to be, it didn’t seem to matter; he just was. Only now he wasn’t. And he wasn’t even just being told it! This man, a total stranger, had let him into his mind. _Willingly._ Máenach hadn’t needed the permission to do so, he knew it—but he’d been given it. That fact alone made Máenach dread being alone again. Already, he couldn’t imagine a return to being the lonely hooded figure in a rundown tavern, or the control-driven monk abasing himself before a cross.

“There are—” His voice broke. Máenach swallowed again, several times. “There are others like me?”

Eachan hesitated, as if to regulate his words, but it was too late. Máenach read the thought Eachan had been about to reshape, and his heart sank.

_‘I’ve never heard of anyone with a talent like this—not anyone who wasn’t just bragging or telling a story. I never even thought it was real myself until just now. Sensitives have always claimed they could do things like this, but when put to the test, they always failed—those who even allowed the test at all.’_

The thought continued, an unbroken stream of a single idea, but Máenach looked away and blocked it out, his throat working and shoulders slumped. A moment later he felt the hand on the back of his neck squeeze.

“I can’t say,” Eachan admitted quietly, and something in Máenach’s chest at once tightened and warmed. This man … how many times, now, had this man’s spoken word mirrored his internal thought? Even reshaped, they mirrored one another, and not in any way that told Máenach he was damned just for being able to hear it. “There are others with mental powers, but not like this. Maybe there are, somewhere, hiding their skill like you. I don’t know. But you’re not _alone_. There are many, many sorcerers out there, and most of them have stories similar to yours. Of having to hide, of being burdened by the ignorant.”

It should have made Máenach feel better. That’s what it was meant to do, he could feel. It didn’t. It didn’t, because of the weight of the memories Eachan had let him possess.

“They won’t like me,” Máenach said in a deadened voice, the sort made of absolute resignation. “I saw it. Paranoid. Bitter. Apathetic. Arrogant. That’s how you think of them.” He tried to smile. It didn’t quite work. “No one wants to be around someone like me, not even m- mortals—” He stumbled over the word he’d pulled from Eachan’s own mind, but then rallied and continued. “Sorcerers will like me even less. They’re used to having power. They won’t like it when it’s taken away. Or when they just don’t have it at all.”

_‘He’s right. He’s right and I can’t even deny it; having magic makes people arrogant enough to believe there’s nothing more powerful. It’s why most of us don’t believe in God. Who can believe in someone all-powerful, when we have so much power to enforce change ourselves?’_

Eachan exhaled slowly. “That’s what I’ve observed,” he admitted.

_‘And he knows that. I’m how he knows that. He knows everything I’m about to say.’_

He was going to say it all anyway. It seemed, his thoughts rang, more polite and solid that way. A corner of Máenach’s mouth drew up slightly. Maybe for him it did. Even so, Máenach said nothing, content to listen with a quiet, almost child-like fascination to the way Eachan’s thought and word ran parallel. Like the latter was an echo of the former.

“For that reason, I’d caution you against being open about your skills,” Eachan said. “But just because they won’t like it doesn’t oblige you to seclude yourself.”

“What else am I to do?” Máenach asked desperately. “If not for their protection, than for mine—”

“I’ll protect you.” Eachan’s assertion was sudden, a choice come together in an instant, so swiftly than Máenach didn’t have the chance to read it in his mind before it happened. Eachan held his gaze, lifting a hand with a snap of his fingers until he had a small ball of fire burning in his palm. “I’m strong enough, magically. But I’m strong enough politically too. I wasn’t born of sorcerers, but—”

Máenach unstuck his throat enough to talk, but dazedly. “Your master was the last heir of a clan with no children of his own, and he left everything to you.”

“That’s right.” There wasn’t even any surprise in Eachan anymore, though he smiled grimly. “I suspect it’s the only reason a lot of sorcerers put up with me. Most of them don’t like the things I have to talk about, otherwise. But most of the sorcerers in my position also have some kind of manservant. I never saw the point of one, and it will be a cover only, but it’s a good one—no one will notice you, or question why you stay so close to me—”

The rest of Eachan’s words, calm and considering as if still letting the plan unfold in his own head—which he was—were lost in a gaze of sudden dizziness. Never in a thousand years would Máenach have imagined this. Not only acceptance but _understanding_ , and from the only person in the world willing to give it, apparently—the only person, and he had found Máenach. Found him, and offered him safety. Employment. Sanctuary. Máenach didn’t care what Eachan said about his needs; Máenach would walk from Ireland’s northern coast to its southern in bare feet if Eachan asked it. Nothing Máenach did could repay this.

“—would be extremely useful. How does that sound?”

Taking deep but discreet breaths, Máenach managed to gather himself again to hear those final words and see Eachan looking at him expectantly.

“I, uh—” Máenach hesitated for a heartbeat, reasoned that Eachan had given his permission already, and hastily read the thought he’d missed.

 _‘—be so much easier to truly know what people are_ thinking _, and if I can know that then perhaps I can figure out how to better approach them, persuade them to support my efforts in closing the gap between sorcerers and mortals. Ireland is a seat of magic; the whole world will follow our lead if we get it right. But that might only happen with this man’s help, if he’s willing to help me by spying on others, and given his past he may not want to …’_

Máenach almost laughed. “I would,” he said with a quiet sort of intensity he had never quite managed with God even in the grip of desperate fervour for forgiveness, “do anything you require of me, Master.”

 _‘He what?’_ Shock was chased by stun was chased by a sort of dazed bemusement. _‘He really means that.’_

“Only if you don’t call me master,” Eachan said, vying for a smile and only succeeding in an odd frazzled bafflement. “You’ll need a name. There’s too much power in given names for you, especially, to go without protection.”

“The monks used to call me the hopeless one,” Máenach said without thinking, and Eachan’s thoughts froze again, his face flashing with combined anger and pity. It was oddly gratifying.

“Something else less … judgemental, perhaps,” he managed tactfully after a moment, but Máenach shook his head and actually found himself smiling. Sixty years he had lived on this Earth, in one place, and he could count on one hand the numbers of times he had smiled. For the first time it didn’t feel like a trespass on God’s good grace.

“No. They’re right. I _was_ hopeless. I … _am_ hopeless.” Everyone else’s hopelessness. His own. “I’m—lost, within others.” Now he knew it for what it was. Now he knew what he heard wasn’t evil or temptation, but the minds of men crying out in the darkness where no one else could hear them. Like Eachan had just done for him. And yet, for all that, he would still be lost himself. “I’m Hopeless.”

It didn’t feel wrong. It felt like something had clicked. Not audibly, yet something in his being felt as if a missing piece had settled. Hopeless watched Eachan, though, watched him frown, felt him worry.

“I wouldn’t want you to believe a thing that’s untrue,” Eachan said carefully.

“It’s what I am,” Hopeless said softly. “Why can’t I be—one name, many people? Why can’t I bind us all together?”

_‘Far be it for me to criticise the only choice he’s ever had.’_

Finally Eachan smiled, and gently. “Very well.” He rose with a groan, dusting off his clothes, and reached a hand down for Hopeless’s. “Our first job is to investigate the destruction of the monastery. I suspect sorcerers have something to do with why the King’s men were there, but I don’t know how or why. That’s why I was looking for you.”

Gingerly Hopeless accepted the hand, using it and the wall to pull himself to his feet. “There was a traitor among the brothers,” he said self-consciously. “It’s how I knew to get out. He was from another monastery, and came down to see me. I don’t know if he believed in—in what the others told him about me or not. But he was among those killed. I saw it.”

“He’s the link, then,” Eachan said with certainty. “Alright. We’ve drawn some attention, so let’s find somewhere else to stay, get you some clothes, get something to eat. _Then_ we’ll start going over your memories to see if we can figure out where the links where. This way.” He nodded down the alley and moved off down it in the manner of a man who didn’t care whether people followed him or not—but expected they would, if they liked.

“Yes, sir.” Hopeless made to follow, his hands and body tingling with a combination of adrenaline and sheer joyous relief. It was so distracting that he almost ran into Eachan’s back when the man paused and glanced back.

“Well,” Eachan said, “it’s better than ‘master’, at least, and it’ll do well for your cover.” He grinned suddenly, his eyes gleaming with a kind of anticipation Hopeless had seen in the scholars among the monks. “Let’s be off then, Hopeless. We’ve plenty to do.”


	3. The shieldbearer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for emotional abuse.

The estate was dark when Damán stumbled in. He saw a shadow flash out of the corner of his swollen eye, but it was probably just one of the servants. Wincing, Damán limped toward the kitchen, keeping one hand clamped to his side.

It was warm in the kitchen. The fire was banked, so someone must have gone to bed not too long ago. That was good. It meant he had time, and a fire to sanitise a needle so he could sew up this gash. There was a healer’s kit in the back of one of the cupboards—the one with the hole in the corner where the rats got in. They hadn’t managed to keep them out, so everyone just kept the cupboard locked. Damán had put the kit there over a year ago and no one had found it yet.

That’s what he _thought_ , anyway, but when he opened the door there was nothing within. For a few moments he could only stand there and stare at the empty cupboard, listing to one side. Then he heard the footsteps behind him and stiffened, and he spun. His knee buckled and he caught himself on the counter, and by the time he managed to straighten up Father was there.

“So you have been sneaking out,” Father said very quietly. Damán swallowed. “Where?”

“Nowhere,” Damán muttered. His gaze tried to drop but he stopped it. Father hated it when he held his gaze. He’d always hated it. It was stupid, but Damán couldn’t help it. Father acted as though he deserved respect just because, but he’d never explained _why_. Damán didn’t like doing things when he didn’t understand why.

Father’s eyes hardened. “You vex me, boy. I give you the chance to speak plainly and you lie to me. You’ve been going to the village.”

“Maybe I was attacked by a wolf in the woods,” Damán pointed out. Father growled suddenly and gripped his arm, and Damán gasped as it put pressure on one of his bruises.

“Don’t play me for a fool,” Father said in a low voice. “You’ve been to the village, brawling with wastrels and peasants. Have you not learned anything? They are _beneath you_. They’re _mortals_. They are nothing. When you consort with them, you lower yourself. I will not have a son who scrabbles in the dirt.”

Damán breathed and blinked away the tears of pain at the corners of his eyes. “I just—”

“No more,” said Father, and squeezed, and Damán’s breath caught again. “Damán, the next time you go out to indulge your fancies, when you return you will go immediately to your room and remain there until you are retrieved. And you will do so on every subsequent occasion.”

It wasn’t a request, it was a command. A command Damán felt down into the marrow of his bones, like a vice gripping him.

“Why don’t you just order me not to go, while you’re at it?” he asked bitterly, and a moment later his cheek stang with a slap.

“You cannot learn a lesson you’re ordered to perform,” said Father coldly, “and you _will_ learn not to rely on the crutch of my orders. Go to your room and stay there until you’re let out in the morning, Damán.”

Damán turned unwillingly, gritting his teeth both against the force of the command and the pain in his side, and left the kitchen with his head held as high as he could manage. It seemed to take forever to gain the top of the stairs, and by the time he had his hand was full of blood. He leaned on the wall to keep his balance, hoping he wasn’t leaving bloody marks. The world spun dizzyingly around him, and his stomach wanted to heave. He was starting to think it would be a miracle to survive the night, let alone be in any condition to clean the walls if he stained them.

“You _were_ in the village.” Someone spoke unexpectedly and the sound made Damán’s head jerk up, and his vision swam. He leaned back against the wall so he didn’t fall, squinting across the hall at the face that would have been identical to his if his hadn’t been so badly bruised and cut. His brother shook his head. He was still standing in the doorway of his room. “Why do you do this, Damán? What do you get out of brawling with _peasants_?”

“Are you the one who told him?” Damán asked.

“You think I _needed_ to?” demanded his brother.

“I think you _could_ have,” Damán retorted, but tiredly. He wanted to lie down, so badly, but knew that if he did he wouldn’t be able to tend himself.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” said his brother.

“Not if you come and help me.”

“And have Da furious with _me_? No fear.”

“You’re a bloody arse, Fiachra,” said Damán, and he wanted to sound angry, and couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. If there was one person he could rely on in the house, it should have been his twin, but he couldn’t. He kept trying—he kept hoping Fiachra would come to his senses. But he never did, and Damán could never quite shake the feeling that he was too late, had been too late for years before he even knew anything was wrong.

“Éanne,” said Fiachra, and he _did_ sound angry. “My name is _Éanne_ , Damán, stop pretending you don’t remember, and if you’d hurry up and take yours you wouldn’t have to worry so much.”

“I’m not taking a name that isn’t truly mine just to stop Father from being a bastard,” Damán said stubbornly, groping for his door-handle. _I shouldn’t_ have _to take a name just to stop Father from being a bastard,_ he added in his head, and even though it felt true it also felt tired. Maybe this really was what all fathers were like. Maybe Father _did_ have that right.

But Damán still didn’t like it. Father’s right or not, it _felt_ wrong, and Damán still didn’t know why he had come out so different or why he felt that it was. He just did.

Fiachra threw up his hands and turned to go back into his room. “Just don’t forget you’re meant to be my squire for the tournament tomorrow.”

The tournament. The bloody _tournament._ Damán had forgotten about it entirely. He wondered, if he died overnight, whether Father would get a Necromancer to reanimate him and send him along as squire just out of principle. Then he pushed open his door and staggered inside and sank back against it to make it close, and almost blacked out.

He was vaguely disappointed when he didn’t; he just felt very ill. Eventually the smell of hot water made him force his head up. There was a basin on a stand, still steaming and with a towel beside it, and on the tray beside _that_ were the bare basics he needed to not die. Damán felt a rush of relief and it almost made him collapse altogether. None of the servants would have dared his father’s wrath to do that.

“Thank you, Éanne,” Damán whispered, and limped over to the basin. Nothing that was there would heal him outright—but he’d be able to stitch up the gash in his side, and stop it from getting infected, and ease his aches and pains. Tomorrow was still going to be awful—but at least now, he felt, he should be able to survive it.

 

“Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up,” Éanne muttered under his breath, holding out his arms and staring ahead at the field. There was a cut over his eyebrow, but it was bound and shouldn’t trouble him too much even with the helmet on.

“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying,” Damán shot back, and forced his hands to go faster in spite of the way his knuckles were throbbing. One, two, three— “Done!”

He pulled the armour’s last buckle taut and leapt back, and gripped his side with a grimace. Éanne tugged on his helm and pulled up his shield and drew his sword, and strode onto the field. Damán had meant to watch, but his gut churned and he had to lean against the tentpole so he didn’t faint, taking deep slow breaths. Not for long—he pushed himself up and glanced around, and forced his mind to catalogue what he needed to do before Éanne came out of his match, win or lose. There was a roar from the crowd and he glanced over to see Éanne dodge a shaft of lightning from his opponent’s sword, stumbling with surprise. He recovered only an instant later, but his opponent pressed the advantage, and Damán had to turn away to pick up some discarded clothes before he could see whether his brother got the upper hand.

He came nearly face-to-face with a young lady with ginger curls and a paper fan she waved idly as she watched him. She smiled at him and half hid it behind the fan, and Damán’s heart skipped a beat. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” Damán said, and tried to get his brain started again.

“Have you just come from a bout?” she asked, looking at him up and down, and lingering on certain places that made Damán’s cheeks heat. He was suddenly self-consciously aware of the bruises on his face and the bandage around his waist, and his wet and grubby breeches, and the fact he was only in a sweaty tunic, having flung his vest off several hours prior.

He very much wanted to tell her he had, but honesty forced him to admit, “No. My elder brother is the one fighting today.” He motioned toward the field and they both watched for a moment. Éanne had managed to get out of the defensive, but his opponent was quick and used the lightning to keep Éanne from getting close enough to really use his strength. Even a strongman would have trouble being hit by lightning while in a steel suit. If he lost this round, he was out of the tournament.

“I’m sure he’s very handsome,” said the girl, and her gaze came trailing back to Damán and _stayed_ , even when the crowd roared again at something one of the combatants had done. Her eyes crinkled and she smiled again, and it drew in a dimple at the side of her mouth. “But you’re very handsome too.”

“I’m wearing more bruises than clothes,” Damán pointed out, and it sounded stupid, so he mustered a wry smile. “Although I’m not sure which part makes me more palatable to the eyes, to be honest.” She laughed and it made his heart race. “What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?” she asked back, fanning her face and _still_ not looking away.

“Tiarnánson,” Damán said, acutely aware that his answer would indicate he still hadn’t taken a name, and for the first time in his life flushing with embarrassment because of it. It still wasn’t worth the risk of just giving it out. The fact that she’d asked him back indicated that maybe she hadn’t taken a name either. “And you, my lady?”

It took her a little while to answer, long enough and with a shy smile that Damán knew the name was newly taken. “Ríonach.”

“It’s beautiful,” Damán said honestly and without thinking. Ríonach’s head ducked and a blush filled her cheeks.

“Thank you.”

“Ríonach who?” To whose family did she belong? He had to know. If Ríonach was her taken name, and newly so, people might not recognise it if he asked around.

There was a glance and a cry from the field and they both automatically glanced across to see Éanne disarmed and on the ground, struggling to his feet. He scrabbled for his helmet and threw it off, and his face was red and singed underneath. The match was called and Ríonach turned to leave, and Damán’s head jerked around.

“Wait,” he said, almost panicked. “Which family is yours? Who are you?”

She glanced behind her and her face was full of laughter, and she called, “The stag and the willow, Master Tiarnánson.”

Then she simply vanished. A smile spread across Damán’s face and belatedly he turned to help Éanne stagger into the tent, and went to collect his sword and helmet from the field. _The stag and the willow._

Maybe, if he was lucky, he’d found something he’d be allowed to have.

 

“One more, Master Tiarnánson?” asked Donncha, and Damán shook his head with a smile. He’d been wearing the smile all night.

“Not tonight,” he said, pressing his palm against his breast-pocket. “I have to be home early.”

“ _You’re_ going home early, before the fun?” Cormac laughed from a seat down the ways. “Is the Devil riding the wind?”

It was insolent, but Damán didn’t mind. The mortals in the village knew he was supposed to be a noble, but so far no wrath had befallen them and eventually they had relaxed. For over six years now, they’d treated him more like their own. He liked that. It made him feel less alone when he wasn’t on the estate, and when he _was_ on the estate …

When he was on the estate he had Ríonach.

“It’s my wedding anniversary tonight,” he explained, and Donncha whistled.

“That makes ten now, does it?”

Damán’s smile widened. “Yes.”

“What the bloody Hell are you doing hereabouts?” Cormac demanded, shoving him off his stool with one strong arm, and Damán let him, laughing.

“Being far more a husband than the likes of you,” scolded Deirdre, Donncha’s wife, as she came out from the back of the tavern bearing a garland of flowers, the best Damán’s money could buy in the area. “Here it is, Master Tiarnánson. You’ll do well with these.”

“Not quite yet,” said Damán, and took out the velvet purse in his pocket, and shook out the engraved, stone-studded golden band he had spent all year saving to buy. Ríonach liked rings. Father probably knew he had been working on the side in order to buy them, but he hadn’t tried to stop him. Most of it had involved the armoury or the stables or the tournament fields, anyway. Things Damán could justify as part of his duties as his brother’s second.

Carefully he tied it around the stem of the largest and prettiest flower, the one Ríonach would like the most, and Deirdre made a sound of approval.

“Were that all young men like you,” she said, and put the garland in his hands.

“We won’t expect you for a few nights, eh?” Donncha said with a grin, and Damán laughed and left, cradling the garland and face still suffused with the warm of easy embarrassment and anticipation. Technically speaking his father’s order from eleven years before still stood, but Damán had long since figured out how to stretch its bounds. Part of it was because of his marriage to Ríonach. She was the third daughter of a clan that had Father’s approval, but without enough status for him to have bothered wedding Damán’s brother to her. But she hadn’t wanted Damán’s brother. She’d wanted Damán.

Not that Damán and Enda—Éanne—had been close in a long time. Damán knew him better than he knew himself, but most of that was due to his position as his squire. He had to know him. Once Enda had undertaken his Surge, he’d become a lot better in the tournaments—but he still wasn’t that good a _fighter_. Mediocre at best.

He hadn’t liked Damán telling him that, either, even at the same time Damán offered to help him improve. Damán was fairly sure that was about when their relationship had soured completely, when Enda had stopped leaving water and supplies in Damán’s room and Damán had stopped calling him by the Irish translation of his taken name and started using the English instead—at least where Father didn’t hear it.

Not that Damán saw much of Father these days. These days he could afford to skirt the main estate, to walk through the gardens and under the overhanging boughs of the fruit trees, and to the large cottage in the back where Damán and Ríonach had lived for the last decade. It always bloomed from over the tops of the trees as he hit the top of the rise and then vanished again as he started down it, following the cobblestone lane flanked by trees that led right to the door.

The familiar insistent tug of Father’s old command to return to his room made Damán’s bones ache, but he ignored it. These days he had more than one room he called ‘his’, and someone who could let him out. Not that he would _want_ to leave the bedroom early, tonight.

Damán held the garland carefully as he opened the door and closed it behind him, and over the sound of its click he heard a bang, a thudding, and a cry. His heart leapt and then pounded, and he hurried down the hall, hoping that the room was on the way so he wouldn’t be forced to neglect Ríonach needing his help.

There came another cry and he came to the kitchen door, and the scene inside painted itself in his mind in an instant. The toppled chair. The scattered cutlery. The table askew.

His brother fucking his wife from behind, and the sight of her flushed face lifted to the window, and Enda’s startled expression as he raised his head and caught sight of him in the window’s reflection, and then his eyes squeezing shut as he climaxed.

Damán’s body turned away from the doorway and numbness settled in as he let his father’s command take control, taking him up the stairs and to the room. The images from downstairs flowed through his mind, unburdened by the fogginess that seemed to be slowing everything else. He reached the room and entered it and the command lifted, and Damán dropped the garland, and stared down at it, and felt nothing.

No. There was something. The tiniest kernel of _something_ , something he hadn’t felt in a long time. It was an aching sort of yearning, a confusion, an incomprehension that he could have been raised here his whole life and still be so _different_ , and not understand _why_.

His hand hurt and he realised he’d punched the wardrobe, but it made something inside him tighten and that felt good, better than the numbness, so he did it again. And again. _Why?!_

 _Why_ was he so different?

 _Why_ could he look at the things these people enjoyed and see them as such thin facades of chivalry?

 _Why_ could he see so many things wrong in the way they lived?

 _Why_ was he the only one?

 _Why_ was he the one who was lowered, who was dirt-trodden, who _vexed_?

“Damán!” Ríonach’s horrified voice made him pull away from the wardrobe’s splintered door and turn toward her, and he found the numbness had vanished in a wave of hot, pulsing rage. He didn’t even feel the bleeding cuts on his knuckles.

_My wife and my brother._

The knowledge rang in his head, filling the whole of his being, but he said nothing. He had no words, nothing that could properly express how he felt.

_My wife and my brother._

A dull flush rose to Ríonach’s face, one that covered the whole of it nearly as effectively as Enda’s work had done downstairs, and with her dress in disarray and hair scattered she looked so indescribably lovely it made bile rise in his throat. “Damán I didn’t—he looks like _you_ , I thought—”

Wordlessly Damán yanked up his shirt to show the scar just over his hip, one that had faded somewhat but which he had owned since the night before he’d even met Ríonach. One of a handful of scars he had collected like trophies.

Enda didn’t have scars. His skin couldn’t _be_ broken. He wasn’t a person, he was statue, a mannequin made for pleasing his father and nothing else. Damán was the one who bled, who breathed, who _lived_.

The flush spread down Ríonach’s neck. “You weren’t who I thought you were,” she cried. “You’re _weak_ , Damán, I wanted someone _strong_ , I wanted someone who’d fight instead of fold, someone people could _respect_!”

_Why? Why why why whywhywhywhywhy—_

He moved forward and Ríonach looked surprised and then lifted her chin and Damán almost managed to feel sick at the look in her eyes, as though she _expected_ him to hit her or shake her or lay hands on her in a way other than what she deserved—as if she _wanted_ him to mark her instead of love her, as if she _wanted_ him to be a beast instead of a man.

Damán strode past her and down the stairs, and Enda jumped up from his slouch against the wall, his clothes just as much in disarray as Ríonach’s had been. “Damán—”

Damán blew past him and out the door without even a glance, and heard the startled pause before Enda scrambled to catch up. “Damán, wait! It’s not what you—for the gods’ sakes, will you let me explain?!”

_Why?_

“It was just _fun_!” Enda shouted after him, running to catch up to Damán’s long strides.

_Why are you the one who’s the favourite?_

“You’re not exactly _fun_ for her, you know!”

_Why are you the one deserving of gifts and pleasures?_

“You could have offered her so much more if you’d started consorting with the people who could turn you into someone!”

_Why are you the one they see as the right side of honour?_

Damán’s head was ringing as he made the main estate. A back door slammed as he shoved it open and took the servant’s stairs up to his room. _His_. The only one he had left, because the one he’d shared with Ríonach hadn’t, after all, been his. _His_ room was small and its shelves were empty of the mortal books he had smuggled in and out and watched burned and rescued only when he could, because he had thought—he had _thought_ —that he hadn’t needed them anymore, had been willing to give them up.

Because he thought he’d had Ríonach.

Damán went to his wardrobe and yanked it open and picked up the bag lying dusty on the bottom, full of clothes and possessions that had once been so precious. Things that had kept him going, things he had packed and repacked, had lingered over as his chosen anchors, even though he was commanded not to run.

After Ríonach, he hadn’t needed even the fantasy.

He took the bag and turned and left, and went downstairs, and his brother and father turned toward him. Enda looked anxious. Tiarnán looked annoyed.

“Don’t be childish,” he said on seeing the bag across Damán’s shoulder. “You’re far past that.”

“You knew,” said Damán, and it was the only thing he _could_ say, because it was the only thing he _expected_ out of all of this.

“Of course I knew,” said Tiarnán. “She wasn’t fit to be Éanne’s bride, but she was a suitable luxury to ease his tension between tournaments. He’s been competing much better since. _I_ had hoped you’d realised that and finally accepted your duty to help him rise, and let him have her. Instead I find you’re too simple to have even noticed.”

Damán nodded and strode past them toward the door.

“You will not leave this house, Damán,” Tiarnán said. “You _cannot_ leave this house.”

Damán threw open the door and looked back over his shoulder, and wondered, again, _why_. Why had he been born to people such as _these_?

“My name,” he said, “is Dexter Vex.”

He felt a surge of hot vindication at the look of complete surprise on Tiarnán’s face, and then he turned and left, and he didn’t look back.


	4. The wanderer - part one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: Inexplicit sexual abuse of children and violence (including against children).
> 
> Apologies this took so long! Rover's story has turned out to be over 27,000 words and took a *lot* of research. Since it's so long, it'll be split into three sections.

_Snap_.

Tadhg froze and stared down at the charcoal in his hand, feeling oddly betrayed. It was a piece of _charcoal_. A piece of gods-damned charcoal. It was also his best chance of changing things, and it went and _snapped_ on him. It even had the gall to snap so loudly he swore it _echoed_. Was it trying to get him found?

“Are you _trying_ t’get me found?” he demanded of the charcoal, then cast away the stub he held and picked up the larger piece on the floor. “Idiot charcoal,” he muttered, consulting the page in his hand and resuming the circle he was drawing. The noise of it on the stones scraped his ears, but he ignored it. He’d have liked if it hadn’t come to this, not least to save his ears, but it had, and they had left him no choice. “Idiot Matron.” There had to be more to life than _this_ , and if there wasn’t, well, at least he could do something about it. Even if it was something as foolish as summoning a demon.

Tadgh sighed and glanced across the charcoal circle on the floor. “Idiot me. How desperate d’you gotta be to summon a demon, anyways?”

Especially a demon from a religion in which Tadgh didn’t even _believe_. Who cared about some idiot God who couldn’t get down off his high-horse enough to help the people who really needed helping, anyway? Who cared about some God who thought it was sensible to go around blaming girls for things that were perfectly normal, or for saying it was alright to do bad things to people as long as you were _sorry_ enough afterward?

Tadgh was really tired of being ‘sorry’ for things he wasn’t meant to enjoy. It made it hard to _enjoy_ them. And he was really, _really_ tired of people enjoying themselves on _him_ , and then pretending it was all his fault. He still wasn’t even sure _why_ it was all his fault. How could he help how he looked, or what age he was? That was God’s fault, not his.

Áengus wouldn’t have stood for it. Áengus would have made sure Matron and the Happysack Brigade knew the things they did had consequences, like the laws were meant to do. Probably he would have killed a few people with his sword. Unfortunately Tadgh didn’t have a sword, and he wouldn’t have known how to use one even if he did, and he wouldn’t have been able to pay the wergild if he had.

But he could do magic, and that made him close enough to Áengus that he had to at least try. Even though Áengus was a god, and Tadgh wasn’t. Maybe Tadgh could be a hero instead. Why not? He had to have faery blood in him somewhere, if he could do magic.

Tadgh closed the final line and rose, and nodded with satisfaction, and then winced and rubbed his knees. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Idiot stones.”

His fingers hurt too, because he’d worn the charcoal down to a little stub, so he blew on them as he took out his page again. He’d stolen it from one of Matron’s patrons—not the kind to whom she usually sold one of the orphans. Just a patron attending the public hostel. Well, an ollamh[1] of religion, actually, which Tadgh had regretted only because she had seemed nice and even gone about teaching some of the orphans a few letters—but at least it meant that if Tadgh got caught Matron would have to pay the fine. He lived under her roof, after all.

But the ollamh had talked about a book she had, something she was delivering to a monastery, something about demons. So Tadgh had snuck into her room to look at it and stolen the best-looking page for himself. If it had to do with demons, maybe he could put the fear of the gods into Matron and the Happysack Brigade.

Which was why Tadgh was drawing demon-summoning circles in the corner of the public hostel’s cellar. Although calling it a public hostel was _far_ too generous. It implied Matron was worth the high rank, especially ’cos she was so kind for taking in un-free children with nowhere else to go. Hah. The last girl Old Sack of Balls had taken had been five. _Five._ She’d bled out in Tadgh’s lap, until one of Matron’s men had taken her away. Matron had promised him she was being taken to a druid.

Tadgh was thirteen. Thirteen wasn’t old enough to have any rights yet, but old enough to recognise a lie when he heard it. He liked to think not all hostellers were like Matron. He’d heard they weren’t all, anyway. He’d never been to another one before. He’d never been out of the village, and their village didn’t even have a wanton-house—probably because there was the hostel instead. Sometimes he left the hostel and thought maybe he could find something to do somewhere else … but where? He was too young to marry or own anything, and no one wanted to take responsibility for an orphaned un-free boy, even if he went to a brehon for it.

He used to go back with a little something stolen, to help cheer things up a little, but Matron had found out. She couldn’t hurt him, he wasn’t any good like that, but there were other things she could do. Different people she could let use him.

Tadgh felt a shiver work its way up his spine and his gut grow heavy, and angrily he shoved those memories out of his head. Well, no more. If he was a Devil’s boy for not believing in God, or believing in the old stories, or for disobeying, or for being too pretty, or for whatever reasons Matron was going to come up with, he was going to do it with—what was that word? _Finesse_.

And if that meant he got put into slavery ’cos he couldn’t pay the fine, ’cos there wasn’t _anyone_ to pay the fine, well, it couldn’t be any worse.

Tadgh collected the candles he’d stolen and set them down in exactly the points indicated on the paper. The page had been folded and re-folded many times since Tadgh had taken it, and even though he knew it by heart he wasn’t taking any chances.

Next came the incense. That hadn’t been too hard, either, because incense was one thing Matron wasn’t too stingy about getting, if only to pretend the special rooms in the attic weren’t as awful as they actually were. Still, they were expensive, so he’d taken both candles and incense just that morning, because those were things the Matron would definitely notice missing.

It was the flowers he’d had to be careful about. The courtyard had a few weeds and that was it, so Tadgh had wooed a few patrons for the other children. It was something he did anyway, because at least he could cope better, but in this case it meant he could get them to bring him things and flowers weren’t valuable enough for Matron to take them away. He just hoped those, combined with the rats, would be enough of a sacrifice for the demon. There were instructions on the page, but he couldn’t read them. It was a big risk, offering a sacrifice he didn’t know whether the demon would accept, but there was no way he’d be able to find someone who would read the page and not tell on him.

Besides, it wasn’t any more dangerous than _actually_ summoning a demon.

Tadgh did one final check on the page and then folded it up and stuck it in his belt, and took a deep breath which he let out slowly. He lit the candles one by one by snapping his fingers and prodding the wick with the flame in his hand until they caught. He wasn’t very good with fire, yet. Not real fire. He could keep himself warm, or at least warmer than the other children, or heat up water, but lighting candles was as far as he could manage with real fire. It wasn’t as important as the water, anyway. The fact he could make clean water was the reason he’d survived this long.

He stood at the head of the circle. This was also going to be the hard part. If there was a spell, he couldn’t read it, so he was just going to have to make it up and hope. Come to think of it, there were a lot of things here he was probably going to do wrong because he couldn’t read. Oh, well; at least if he set a demon on the orphanage maybe the others will have a chance to escape. Besides, he knew some Latin … sort-of. He’d memorised some of the stuff the priest said every Mass, anyway.

“Akshon-es nostrus, kwasumus Dominay, as- aspr—oh, bugger. Pater noster, kee es in kaelis, um—”

Tadgh grimaced and raised his hands, and summoned as much magic to him as he could. He’d been practising this. He didn’t know how to generate pure magic, but he was hoping that with the fire and the air and the water in the barrel beside him, he’d be able to bring enough magic into the circle that the demon could use it anyway.

Deftly he manipulated the water up out of the barrel and combined it with the air, and the inside of the cellar grew heavy and damp. The flames flickered, but where the cellar had been cold before now it felt something close to warm, so he fed the warmth to the candles and made them burn brighter. Tadgh took a deep breath and clenched his fists slowly to draw the air in tight, so tight that he heard the beams overhead groan with its force. The flames guttered. The floor trembled. For just a second Tadgh’s heart leapt with hope.

He heard shouts and footsteps overhead, and concentrated, pulling the air even tighter. There had to be lots of magic inside the circle now, but it didn’t seem like anything was happening. Tadgh’s breath became short with the effort, and he screwed up his face, and his hands trembled, but he held the magic there. Maybe he just needed more time.

The door to the cellar burst open and he jumped like he’d been stung, and his control of the magic snapped. The humid air shot everywhere, cracking the stones under his feet and making him stumble over as it buffeted him. The candles blew out. Water dripped down the walls. Tadgh pushed himself upright and wiped hair out of his eyes, and saw Matron and her grown-up boys at the stairwell, clutching the walls and each other, and staring at him or the circle on the floor.

“Um,” was all Tadgh could think to say, because it was exactly what it looked like and he … he was going to die, wasn’t he?

“Witchcraft,” Matron whispered, backing away and crossing herself.

“ _Demon worship_ ,” spat one of the men—Tadgh called him Tiny, because he _was_ , or at least he was in the bits that men held so dear—and he kicked over the barrel and lunged for the back of Tadgh’s tunic, drawing his knife. Tadgh’s sloth disappeared in a wave of panic and his hands snapped up, and he _shoved_ , and Tiny went skidding over, losing grip on his knife.

Tadgh staggered and his arms suddenly felt heavy. He was tired—he had used too much magic already, and he hadn’t even been able to summon a demon out of it. And now everyone else was shouting, and running at him, and he tried to dodge the hands reaching for him but there were too many. He couldn’t even tell who was who. It didn’t matter. He struggled, either way, and then someone boxed his ears hard enough to make his head ring and his vision go white. He felt himself being yanked out of the cellar and upstairs, but he couldn’t do anything about it; everything was turning in all directions, and all he could hear was people shouting.

Someone threw him up against something hard, and Tadgh cried out as pain jarred down his shoulder. He caught himself on the hard thing—wall, it was a wall—and put a hand to his head as if that would make it stop spinning. It helped, a little, or maybe that was the fact he was leaning against something now. His ears were still ringing, but he wasn’t sure if that was because of the boxing or the shouts.

“Demon worship!” he heard Matron shrieking. “He was summoning demons in my _cellar!_ ”

“Witch!”

“Demonspawn!”

_Really,_ Tadgh wanted to say, _t’ain’t all that bad. Didn’t even work._

He didn’t get a chance. He tried to push himself up and something hard hit the wall by his face, and he flinched away from the chips of stone that cut into his cheek. He forced his eyes open, forced himself to pay attention, and was just in time to duck another stone with a yelp. Another one struck his side and he gasped and bent over himself, clutching his ribs.

_I was right. I_ am _gonna die_. He was being _stoned. I don’t want to die!_

He tried to get to his feet, but a stone hit his knee and it buckled, and he hit the ground. Gritting his teeth, Tadgh groped for the wall and forced himself up, and this time when he looked up he pushed the air with his hand. The stones wobbled this way and that, not exactly flung back but at least tumbling to the ground before they hit him.

Someone screamed. A few people screamed, actually. A lot more swore, and a lot more shouted, and Tadgh caught sight of Matron pointing at him and gibbering shrilly. He couldn’t tell if he couldn’t understand her because of his head, or because she actually wasn’t making any sense. A heavy weight struck his chest and threw him back against the wall, and Tadgh gasped for the breath he couldn’t find.

_I don’t want to die._

The angry mob spun in front of him. A rock hit his shoulder and he flinched and covered his head with his arms, and tried to push wildly at the air without looking. Someone shrieked, but the shouts only got louder and angrier. Tadgh’s feet scrabbled at the ground, trying to push him back, as if he could sink into the wall and be gone. He _wished_ , so much, he could sink into the wall and be gone. He could almost feel it tingling and warm behind him, as if it was a living thing.

The shouts at large turned to screams. He heard a clatter of stones falling, and looked up to see the mob backing away, their eyes terrified and weapons dropped. He wanted to ask what was happening, but that tingling warmth swept around his sides and down his legs and up his neck and his stomach lurched and then—

 

—the warmth went away, curling off his body like flaking skin, and Tadgh’s ears rang with silence. He cowered, and dragged in air, and after a few moments of grappling managed to get some of it down into his chest. Slowly he looked up, startled by the quiet and the fact that no one had started throwing stones again yet, and found himself face-to-face with a wide-eyed little girl clutching a doll.

“Um,” he said, and made a little wave with a crook of his fingers. “Hallo?”

The little girl screamed and bolted up a path, and Tadgh clapped his hands over his ears with a wince. His head throbbed. So did his chest, and ribs, and knee, and shoulder. Gingerly he looked up. What had happened?

He was in a courtyard. There was a stone path leading across it, parallel to the wall, and grass, and trees. He looked up at the wall behind him. He didn’t recognise it either. The stones changed colour halfway, as if the wall had been fixed up, but the stones at the top were weathered, so it had been a long time ago.

Gingerly Tadgh pushed himself upright and tested his knee. It hurt, a lot, but it held, so he limped along the wall. He wasn’t where he had been, that was for sure. Had he transported himself? Through the _wall_? Was that possible?

Well, at least he wasn’t being stoned anymore. But through the trees he heard a little girl’s excited voice, and the deeper voice of a man, and the crunch of footsteps. The courtyard’s owners weren’t going to like him appearing suddenly on their property. He tried to move faster, and grit his teeth when it made his knee shake.

“But Papa, I promise—”

“I heard you, sweetheart,” said the man patiently. “The statue came alive, is that it?”

“Yes! I swear!”

Something in Tadgh’s chest clenched, and he stopped without meaning to. Their words were strange—they were speaking Irish, but the accents were different and so were some of the words. He wasn’t sure, at first, whether he really understood them properly.

“Very well, dear. Show me where the— _Lord God Almighty in Heaven!_ ”

“See! He’s gone! The statue came alive, Papa!”

Tadgh stood frozen where he was, his heart pounding. Statue? _Statue_? He remembered the beckoning, tingling warmth, and shivered. He’d been a _statue_?

He leaned back against the wall and looked around again, and his breath felt short. This time, his eyes picked out the things that looked familiar. None of the plants were, in the least, but the drainage ditch to his left was, and so was that scarring on the stone up over his head—what look liked childish attempts at carving images. He remembered chipping a dog into the stone. He had been very proud of it.

Tadgh’s chest felt tight. He looked toward the house, and squinted through the trees, but he couldn’t see the building properly. What if it was a different building? The courtyard had a few things that looked familiar— _a statue_ —but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe he was imagining things. That was probably it. He was just imagining things. He couldn’t be sure of some of the words the little girl and her father were speaking. Maybe he had mistaken them.

There came a squeal from nearby and Tadgh’s head jerked around. It made his temples throb, but then he saw the little girl, with her hair ruffled, pointing toward him from along the wall. “He’s here! Papa, he’s here and he’s real and alive!”

“Don’t go near him!” cried her father. “Sadh, come back!”

“But he’s right there, Papa!”

Wide-eyed, Tadgh watched the girl start to run toward him, and then her father burst through the bush and snatched her up and whirled her around, protecting her with his body in spite of her protests.

“Demon,” whispered the father, and Tadgh flinched.

“Papa!” Sadh whined. “He’s not a demon! He’s a faery! Look at him! He’s a faery, Papa!”

“Sadh, be silent.” Her father shook her a little, still watching Tadgh warily, and taking steps away slowly as if Tadgh would eat him if he moved any faster. “This is nothing to laugh over.”

“I’m not laughing, Papa.” Sadh pouted, and she clutched his shoulders to look at Tadgh over his shoulder. All he could do was look back. He wanted to run, very much—or at least move—but his body didn’t listen. His mind was still working, though. It was running like a galloping horse.

Abruptly Tadgh straightened and summoned a winsome smile, and bowed with a flourish that made his chest ache so fiercely it stole his breath. He ignored it. He was good at that. “Well, sorry to startle you, milady. S’been a thousand jumps off a flea’s back since I’ve been in this mortal world, and all.”

Sadh squealed. “You _are_ a faery!”

“Sadh,” said her father in a low voice, backing away. His eyes flicked this way and that. Looking for an escape? Looking for stones? Tadgh didn’t know and didn’t care. He just nodded, and smiled, and tilted his head in a way Matron had always hated because it made him look as though he was planning things. Usually, he was.

“Didja know it’s lucky to’ve a faery appear in your garden, milady?”

“Yes,” Sadh breathed.

Tadgh rocked back on his heels, clasping his hands behind him, and still he smiled. “Didja know it’s really, really _bad_ luck to go around turning a faery out when they’ve gone to so much trouble comin’ to your lovely home and garden to bless it? Lovely garden, this. Lord Carnonos was mighty pleased.”

The father stopped, and all the blood drained out of his face. “You’re—you’re a servant of Lord Carnonos?”

“Be fair disappointed if he knew you’d turned me away, he would.” Tadgh shook his head sadly. “Mortals these days. Dunno how to show the proper _respect_.”

“Oh, Papa, we can’t turn him out!” Sadh cried, clutching her father’s collar. “It’s bad luck and they like our garden so much! We have to invite in a faery!”

The father looked around wildly, and his throat bobbed. Finally he managed to look back at Tadgh, and straightened, and said croakily as if he was trying to believe it, “You’re—you’re not a faery.”

This was going to take some of that _finesse_. Tadgh straightened and let his smile fall. He liked smiling. He preferred to smile. But he knew from experience that when he stopped smiling, people flinched. Especially when he stared without blinking. He let his hands fall to his sides, and breathed out, and pulled gently on the air with his fingers, and the wind gusted, sending leaves swirling all around him. “Ain’t I?”

Sadh squealed with delight, reaching out to grab at the leaves. Her father flinched back and clutched her tighter, and Tadgh let the leaves fall. He felt dizzy with relief that it had worked. That, and it made the tired throb in his head come back. And his arms. And his legs. All of a sudden all he wanted to do was sleep.

He kept his gaze trained on the man and hoped the dizziness wasn’t showing in his eyes, and asked very quietly, “You gonna make me go back to Lord Carnonos?”

“No,” said the man quickly. “No, please—s- sir? No. Please.” He turned half away, toward the house. “Come—come in. My house is yours.” And then he hurried off, glancing back with fright written large all over his face.

Tadgh exhaled, clasped his hands behind his back to hide the tremble, and stepped carefully after the man, hoping he had enough strength left in him to find excuses for a bed before he fell over.

Three days later he escaped out the window when the man and his fellow clansmen came to break down his borrowed door.

 

Tadgh was cold. Tadgh was so cold that cold had stopped even being a word. He was so cold that his feet were numb. He was so cold that his toes were blue, and Tadgh was sure that if he knocked one of them the wrong way on the cobblestone it would fall off—oh, there went his littlest one.

“Bugger,” he whispered, and it came out almost soundless because the cold air bit the inside of his chest. He stared at his toe and it was too cold to even bend down and pick it up and see if it was possible for him to attach it with magic. He could afford to lose his toes.

He couldn’t afford to break the thin veil of magical warmth keeping his chest and innards even close to being alive. At least he was still shivering. That was a good sign. Or at least a better sign than not shivering. It still took a lot more energy than he wanted to start walking again.

Tadgh was so cold that he was starting to wish he was back at the hostel again. But he couldn’t be. The hostel was gone, and had been for a long time. He had managed to listen to people talking, and he was fairly sure he knew how much time had gone by. Mostly. It was a long time, anyways, long enough that the hostel had been broken-down and replaced with a house and a garden, and the village didn’t look much like he remembered it did. It was bigger, and there were people there who spoke languages he didn’t know. People who’d come up the river in boats, and spread out around the next village over until they found the village here too. The Lochlannaigh[2], he’d heard.

He bumped into someone and muttered an apology, but they put a hand on his shoulder. Tadgh would have tensed, but he was too tired and too cold. Instead he just dragged his head up and blinked at a woman in a red velvet dress. She was three times his width, and her chest was trying to escape from the dress.

She was big, he thought enviously. She’d eaten well for a long time.

“Poor little mite,” she said kindly, holding her parasol over them both. “Come with me.”

_Bad,_ something deep in Tadgh whispered, but he was so cold that he followed when she turned and strolled down the narrow street. The building she took him to was large and all the windows had curtains drawn, even though it was late in the day. At least, Tadgh was pretty sure it was late in the day. He hadn’t seen the sky since morning.

_Bad,_ insisted that weak little voice, but it really was weak. They went inside and at first the whole place seemed empty, and then a stern-looking woman with braided hair came out. Maybe it was another hostel. Tadgh could do that. He was allowed to stay in hostels.

“I hope that’s all you needed before tonight,” said the woman in the velvet, putting her wicker basket on the counter separating the front entrance from the rest of the house and yawning. “I need a nap.”

“Who is this, Caoimhe?” said the woman. Her eyes were on Tadgh. He stayed quiet and looked at her and enjoyed the fact there was no breeze inside.

“He was freezing on the street,” said Caoimhe, and the woman regarded him for a while longer before nodding.

“Upstairs, then. Come along, lad. How old are you?”

“Thirteen,” Tadgh said softly through chapped lips, and followed her around the desk. That’s what Matron had said he was, anyway. Was it true anymore? Really he was older than anyone ever got. Really he was nearly _sixty_. Even though he didn’t feel like it.

The woman didn’t say anything else, but she took him into a kitchen with a lit fireplace and he _stared_ at it, because he couldn’t remember ever being so close to a real fire in a real fireplace like this before. The woman put a blanket around his shoulders and he jumped, and submitted to the push when she directed him to curl up in front of it.

It wasn’t hot. It was _meant_ to be, he could tell, and he could feel the heat on his face, but he still felt cold inside.

“Here.” The woman gave him a bowl and he stared down into it. There was soup inside. It was simple soup and he could tell it was the last of a cauldron with all the dregs and gristle, but it was _food_ and it was _hot_. He couldn’t eat it quickly so he sipped at it, swallowing the chunks without bothering to chew.

Then it was empty so he clutched it to his chest instead, and drowsed beside the fire, and for the first time in days he slept. When he woke up it was because the woman shook him.

“You’re alive,” she said, sounding a little surprised for only a second before she looked pleased. “Good. Get up. Clean yourself up, get changed.” She pointed at a basin over in the corner, with a towel, and then walked off. Tadgh yawned and rubbed his eyes, and staggered to his feet, and almost fell over because the world turned around him. He still felt tired and weak, and his face was tight from being so close to the fire, but he felt _warm_.

His legs were numb and he shook them out as he went to the basin. His feet hurt and he looked down and saw blood across the floor, and remembered that one of his littlest toes had broken off. It was bleeding now, and as soon as he realised it the joint throbbed horribly. Tadgh clung to the basin and looked around it, and there were some things he could use so he made up a tight little bandage to cover the stub.

The towel was just some sackcloth, but the clothes were … nice. Nicer than anything he’d worn before in his life. There were trousers and a tunic, and even a vest to go _over_ the tunic. It wasn’t anything like what nobles wore, or even what a lot of the men who’d come to the hostel had worn, but it was a _vest_. He’d never worn a vest before.

_Bad,_ the voice whispered, and this time it was stronger. Tadgh thought about it, turned it over in his head. He still felt tired, but he was warm. Warm and fed, and clothed, and his lack of toe was bandaged. Right now, that was worth a lot.

 

It took nearly a week for the little voice in Tadgh to be proven right. In that time the stump where his toe had been was given the chance to scab over and stop bleeding every time he walked for too long. He almost forgot what it felt like to be cold—almost. It was easy to forget how cold it was outside when he was allowed, even ordered, to curl up with a blanket in front of the fire every night. He even managed to get some fat on his limbs. Not much, but a little, enough that he wasn’t so bony.

The women who lived in the building almost smothered him with attention. He wasn’t used to that. At least, not this sort of attention. It was a good sort of attention. They’d laugh and hug him and stroke his hair, and giggle and kiss his cheeks when he stole flowers for them. It made him want to steal more flowers.

They were wanton. Tadgh had known that since the first night they came downstairs in a flurry of laughter and perfume and pretty scarves, and Brigid—the matron—had sent him into the kitchen. Tadgh didn’t mind. It was warm in the kitchen. Actually it was warm everywhere in the building, but Tadgh liked the kitchen. It meant he could be useful. He could bring out food and wine, and relight the candles, and observe.

This place was nothing like the hostel. The women seemed to have fun, and when they didn’t Brigid had a very large man, whom Tadgh decided to call Thatch because of his hair, pick up whoever was making things difficult and throw them out.

One day Brigid called him out from the desk which blocked the entrance from the room. Tadgh trotted out there from the kitchen, expecting to be sent on an errand, maybe down to the markets. He hadn’t left the house since he’d come in, and even though his toe still hurt he wanted to get out for a while before coming back. This wasn’t like with Matron, anyway—she’d been free, and using people. Brigid was un-free and helping other un-free earn wealth, and protecting them. Maybe even Tadgh could find something to do here.

There was a man in front of the desk and Tadgh gave him a glance, and then looked at Brigid.

 “See?” Brigid said to the man, and Tadgh felt a trickle of misgiving. The man was looking at him like he was a slab of beef at a stall. Like he was something the man liked and wanted, and there was nothing stopping him from getting it except a little price he was willing to pay.

_Bad,_ whispered Tadgh’s little voice, louder now than it had been all week, _very bad._

“He’s pretty,” said the man, and Tadgh’s stomach sank. Stupid, stupid. Just because the wantons here were all girls didn’t mean Brigid might not want to branch out. Some of them didn’t even look much older than Tadgh. The man nodded briskly. “Tonight, then, madam.”

He turned and left and his gaze only abandoned Tadgh once he was facing completely away. Brigid turned to Tadgh. “Do you understand what just happened, boy?”

“You just gave me to a bloke who wants some pleasure,” Tadgh said quietly, and his gut churned.

“Good,” said Brigid. “Go upstairs and have Caoimhe show you an empty room. As long as you please your patrons you will stay warm and fed through the winter—if not longer.”

Silently Tadgh nodded, and then he turned and went upstairs, and didn’t bother to knock before entering. Caoimhe lay sprawled on her bed, not sleeping but, Tadgh thought, probably enjoying being _alone_ in it. She was also naked.

“Oy there, Tyke,” she said lazily, waggling her fingers at him. “What can I do you for?”

“I wanna learn some things,” said Tadgh, and then added, “Brigid wants you to show me an empty room.”

“She does, eh?” Caoimhe regarded him without surprise.

“You knew she would,” said Tadgh, and was almost startled when his voice came out resigned instead of accusing.

“I thought you’d appreciate more the chance to earn your way,” said Caoimhe, “than freeze in the gutter. Was I wrong?”

“No,” Tadgh admitted, “but I wanna learn what you know. If I’m gonna be— _used_ —” Again. “—then I want to know what to do.” And how to stop the things he didn’t like.

Now Caoimhe’s face filled with surprise, but then she swung her legs off the bed and the rest of the blanket came down, and she patted her bare knees. “Come here, then,” she said, not unkindly, “and I’ll teach you how to pleasure.”

 

“So’s anything else I can do for my good sir tonight?” Tadgh asked with a bright smile and an impish edge, tracing the muscles along Sir Bedalot’s back. They were muscles that were actually visible, which was nice to see on a man Sir Bedalot’s size. Back when he’d still been young Tadgh used to dream of having as much fat as most of his patrons did—until he saw how much trouble they had getting up the stairs, and had to be creative with how he pleasured them. It was hard to be unique with his talents when bulk got in the way. At least they took their time about it, so’s he got the chance to _get_ creative.

Sir Bedalot wasn’t in a talking mood tonight. He grunted and got out of bed and pulled his clothes back on.

“Want some help?” Tadgh asked lazily, rolling onto his back and looking at Sir Bedalot upside-down, sprawling across the bed in a way he knew accentuated all the best parts of him. Sir Bedalot wasn’t buying, though he certainly wasn’t above _looking_ , which was good because at least that meant he wasn’t displeased—just not in a talking mood.

Tadgh waggled his fingers at him as Sir Bedalot exited, shoving open the door and letting the curtain drop. With a yawn Tadgh rolled off the bed and scooped up the ring-money Sir Bedalot left on the bureau, and fitted them over his fingers, and waggled them. They were loose on his fingers, but that was alright. Tadgh pulled on some trousers and wandered downstairs where the girls were in the commons, giggling and exchanging stories, relaxing after an evening’s work but in public so new patrons could see them.

Tadgh was the only man in the brothel. Brigid had once found another boy, but when he got older he had been arrogant and indiscreet and the Church got hold of him. Tadgh hadn’t found out what happened to him after that.

“Good evening, my delightful and delectable ladies of fame and fortune,” Tadgh said from the stairs with a bow and a flourish. “I have gathered you all here today because I’ve a Great And Terrible Need.”

The women laughed at him and blew kisses back as he came properly down the stairs, grinning, and flopped on one of the couches. It had used to be Caoimhe’s favourite couch, but that was nearly fifteen years ago. She had died a few years back. Syphilis.

Bébinn prodded him with her toes. “Give us a massage, oh good and kind sirrah. We need to be supple for your pleasures.”

“Think you’re takin’ advantage of me,” Tadgh said with mock severity, but he rolled over and sat up, and put his fingers around her foot, and massaged her sole with his thumbs.

“Me next,” one of the other girls chimed in, and Tadgh laughed. Then glass shattered and some of the girls screamed, and a clay pot filled with oil smashed into the carpet. It had a wick on it and the soaked carpet caught, and then more windows were smashing and more pots hit the floor. In a whirlwind of silk the girls scrambled away, and belatedly Tadgh realised he probably ought to do the same.

Brigid appeared in the doorway, her eyes as sharp as they had been when Tadgh had been thirteen even though her face was wrinkled and her hair thinning. “Single file,” she barked over the sound of spreading flames. “Don’t run, don’t panic, everyone through the door.”

Tadgh jumped up and moved to follow Brigid’s orders and then stopped, his stomach flip-flopping. Some of the youngest girls were too new, too ashamed, to want to be with company—they stayed upstairs after the first round, and if no one went up to get them out—

“Keep moving!” Bébinn called from behind him and Tadgh obeyed, but when he passed the stairs he darted up them, ignoring Brigid’s cry of warning. The smoke was already collecting on the upper floors and he coughed and spread his hand before him, forcing the smoke to the ceiling to give him space to breathe.

Someone stumbled half-dressed from a doorway, but it was a man so Tadgh let him pass and then lunged into the same room. The girl inside was coughing, looking confused, but when Tadgh yanked her out of the bed she stayed on her feet.

“Downstairs,” he told her, and followed her out to keep on down the hall, pushing open doors. Some girls were already on the way down, and he had to push past their panicked shoving. No one asked why the smoke was drifting high, but more and more of it was filling the hall until Tadgh had to walk bent-over so his head wasn’t in it. The floor was hot under his feet, and when he glanced out a window he saw flames licking up from the lower floor.

That was it. End of the hall. Tadgh turned and went back to the stairs, and ran into Bébinn’s back. He hadn’t even noticed her follow him up. She wasn’t the only one on the stairs, just the last, but when Tadgh craned his head he saw red and orange flames engulfing the bottom.

_Bugger. Bugger bugger bugger_ — Tadgh looked wildly around, covering his mouth with his hand and channelling clean air into it. The girls weren’t so lucky—they crowded together, sinking to the floor.

He tugged Bébinn’s arm and told her, “Get them to the end of the hall!”

“There’s no way to—ah!” Realisation lit her eyes and Tadgh ran to the end of the passage, tears in his eyes because of the smoke. His feet hurt with every step with the heat in the floorboards. His mind felt half-frozen but at the same time everything seemed clear.

There was a window at the end of the hall and it looked on the roof of the next building. They had to get out and the stairs were blocked, and that meant breaking the window.

A lot of the wantons didn’t have much more than a bed in their room, because extra furniture was usually reserved for the senior girls, but one of _them_ liked the end of the hall, which meant something to shove through the window—the dresser was bolted down. Of _course_ the dresser was bolted down.

Tadgh abandoned the dresser and ran back out into the hall, and saw the trail of coughing girls tumbling toward him, and then turned and shoved air and the smoke shattered the window from inside out. Flames exploded and almost knocked him down and the girls screamed and heat rushed past them all, and when Tadgh whirled he saw the fire more than halfway up the hall and one of the girls alight, stumbling and flailing about. Bébinn tackled her to the floor, shouting, “Roll! Roll!”

Swallowing hard, Tadgh grabbed the first girl and glanced back once, and saw Bébinn look up at him, and saw the wideness of her eyes and the paleness of her face even with the heat. She flinched when their gazes met, and Tadgh knew that at least one person had seen.

There wasn’t time to mention it. Tadgh spun and deposited the girl outside, on the other roof. It was in flames too, its eaves creeping with fire and embers burning in patches on the thatch where the explosion had lit it. The girl lay there coughing, but Tadgh heard shouts from the street and saw lines of people with buckets, and pulled his head back in to help the others out.

The hall was an inferno. Flames swept along the walls, the floor, and the heat pounded Tadgh’s bare chest. His feet were blistering, the wood was so hot under his soles.

Someone had got a ladder and put it up on the far side of the next building along, and the girls still paying attention stumbled toward it. Bébinn got out next and helped them along, and Tadgh picked up the last, the one who had been burned and couldn’t walk and lay there whimpering instead. There wasn’t any way he could pick her up without hurting her.

Tadgh took a running step out of the window and his feet hit the roof and he let out a cry as they buckled with agony. He got his shoulder up and rolled to protect the girl in his arms, but she let out a sobbing wheeze of pain anyway.

Head ringing, Tadgh handed the girl off to someone else and tried to get up, and stumbled. His skin felt tight all over, and his back and feet throbbed.

“It’s taking the roof!” someone shouted, and Tadgh turned back just as the top-floor ceiling fell in and flames spurted out at them. Without thinking Tadgh thrust out his hands and forced the fire to part around them, and his head rang some more. Then he cut off the air and the flames died and he stood there panting and singed, but alive and not on fire.

People were screaming. At first Tadgh thought, “Because of the fire”, and then someone struck him in the back and his knees buckled. He hit the roof and rolled off, and instinctively he pushed toward the ground. His fall slowed so much that he could actually get his feet under him before he hit, and rolled, and staggered back up.

A _lot_ of people were screaming. Someone came at him with a sword and Tadgh twisted the air and the sword skated off nothing—nothing they could see.

“He did it!” someone wailed.

“Demon!”

“Witch!”

_Devil mend you!_ Tadgh coughed when he tried to speak and managed to dodge the bucket someone swung at his head. He snapped his fingers and threw fire toward them, and the screams took a fevered pitch.

The flames behind him snapped and roared, and the wanton-house groaned. Some people were still trying vainly throwing water but a lot seemed to think that killing Tadgh would solve the problem. That was—that was bloody _typical_ , that was.

Tadgh dodged some stones and used air to bat away the rest, trying to sidle around the side of the building. Maybe he could still get away that way, even limping and barefoot.

Then there came a jingle of swords and bows and javelins, and the creak of leather armour, and a strident voice barking orders to— “—force those lines back to the well, you pestilent sack of fools and martyrs, move!”

A fian[3]. Digdi’s icy tits.

“Get in your line, fill those buckets!” bellowed the leader on his horse, using his mount to shoulder some of the crowd apart. One of the local noble’s sons. Digdi’s icy tits _again_. “See to the fire, Devil mend you all, or half the town will be gone by morning!”

“He’s a witch, he made fire in his hands!” shouted one of the men from across the way. “Fire took him and he didn’t burn!”

Tadgh looked at the nobleman. The nobleman looked back and Tadgh saw the strained intent, the thought that was crossing both of their minds: “Panicked townsmen would let a town burn if they thought the un-free witch causing it still lived.”

It wasn’t like there was any wergild to pay, for the death of an un-free witch. The nobleman signalled and an archer limbered his bow and drew an arrow, and fired. Tadgh threw up his hands and the arrow veered off and stuck in the burning wall of the building behind him.

The nobleman looked startled. The crowd roared. Tadgh turned and ran back into the burning building, spreading his hands before him to keep the flames away. He smelled burning flesh and knew that was him burning, his unprotected feet; his eyes watered with smoke and his chest ached with foul air even inside his cocoon. He stepped on broken floor and it splintered under him and he fell into the cellar, landing hard on the earthen floor. Timber cracked and embers rained down on him. Tadgh gripped the floor and looked up, and saw the building falling in.

Then stone came up over his face and he—

 

—drew in a breath and nearly choked on the dust. Tadgh coughed explosively and this time drew in a tiny, tiny breath and it rasped in his throat. His whole body hurt, mostly his skin and his feet, and he could feel the weight of the whole broken building on top of him. When he looked up, he saw it too.

_At least it’s not on fire anymore,_ he thought.

Maybe not on fire, but everything smelled musty and like ash and timber. When Tadgh closed his eyes to listen he only dimly heard people passing on the street. Tadgh shifted experimentally and felt the beams above him groan, and winced at the ache it left in his body. But the beams _had_ shifted, and that meant there might be enough leeway to work himself free.

It took hours. Hours and hours and _hours_. Tadgh was sure it had because he had to rest many times, making water, and more than once he wondered whether it would be worth turning himself into stone again. But that wouldn’t stop him from being hurt when he came out of it again, and what if someone chose to rip up the house’s remains to build over them and he got smashed? No, he had to get free right now, before any more time passed.

He didn’t realise he’d made it at first. It was night, and cloudy, so he was working grimly up and then he stuck an arm through an opening and felt the brush of moving air. Not long after that Tadgh crawled out of the wreckage and glanced back at it, and saw the weeds growing through. At least a year, then.

Tadgh glanced around and saw the buildings had gotten taller. There was a symbol on a pole in front of the ruin. Witchcraft, signed by the Church. No wonder no one had built over it. The sign looked weathered with mould and droppings, so it had been there a while too.

_Does anyone remember what happened here?_ Tadgh wondered. If they didn’t, did that mean he could slip into the ranks of the un-free labourers?

Then he looked down at his hands and saw the ring-money still on his fingers, and gritted his teeth to pull them off one-by-one, taking burned flesh with them. He peered at them and decided he could clean off the flesh, and gripped a hand gingerly and let out a whimper when his fingers blazed with agony. Still, he was alive. Alive and he had something to barter with.

Weaving unsteadily, Tadgh climbed to his feet and staggered down the street.

 

[1] An ollamh was essentially a professor, someone with knowledge whose work was to impart that knowledge.

[2] ‘Raiders’, specifically Vikings.

[3] A warrior band made up of young noblemen and women who have not yet inherited. In winter they served as law enforcement for the noble who housed them, while in summer they hunted for food and pelts to sell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christianity reached Ireland in roughly the 5th century, but for a significant length of time its code of conduct existed alongside the native Irish laws -- though Christian values slowly came to define moral thinking, the old Brehon system still remained in place for practical daily living. This influenced things such as currency (Ireland had no coin system until the late tenth century; wealth was primarily defined by land and cattle) and social systems (those in the legal and teaching professions were among the highest in status, next to kings; hostellers were among those considered to be pillars of individual communities; the 'un-free' lacked citizenship or rights to land ownership but could become quite wealthy).
> 
> Most of my information about Brehon laws came from this online book: http://www.libraryireland.com/Brehon-Laws/Contents.php
> 
> The first Viking raids began in the ninth century, during which time many of them settled in Ireland with the founding of coastal towns. There was continuous conflict between the native Irish and the Viking settlers, though no more so than between the Irish factions, some of whom allied with the Vikings for their own ends.


	5. The wanderer - part two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: More violence, slavery, depression.

Trading for favours on the street and at the fair paid for Tadgh’s life for a month. Then some of the un-free in just the same situation tried to rob him, and he objected, and then they fought, and Tadgh made himself stone again when they called his bluff and tried to cut his throat.

When he woke up again a wanton-house had sprung up down the street so Tadgh went there and introduced himself, and that paid much better because at least he had a roof over his head. Wanton men weren’t nearly so common as the women, either, so he got some good clientele.

It took a decade before he realised that he still looked the same that he had years and years and years before and that was only because the girls started whispering and casting looks. Before he knew it the Church sent someone to collect him, though Tadgh didn’t know _why_ , because it wasn’t like he’d done anything wrong. It wasn’t against any laws to look young.

But they took him to the monastery and pushed him into a tiny cell which they said was ‘his’ room, and made him say prayers at a stupid cross and kneel for ages and then decided he needed to be exorcised. So he made himself stone.

That was the first time he found out that the stone only worked part of the time. He woke up two days later, and then the monks dragged him out and exorcised him anyway. It was stupid, and painful, and _stupid_ , and Tadgh didn’t feel any different after except exhausted and thirsty and _hungry_ , and his head hurt because they’d been shouting Latin and Greek at him for so long.

So he made himself stone again and when it stopped this time the door to his cell was broken and rusted, and he didn’t care how long it had been, he just wanted out.

He’d never left the town before—but there wasn’t any town _left_. Someone had come through and ransacked it, until all the buildings were as broken and weathered and empty as he was. He spent a lot of time wandering around it, at first, but there wasn’t any food except hazelnuts and herb-gardens gone wild, or badgers.

One day a group of men came into the town, with a wagon and a mule and all filled with wary greed and carrying swords and javelins. Tadgh watched them from his seat on the fountain, and as they got closer without noticing him he realised they thought he was a statue even though this time he wasn’t.

After a moment he decided that was fair. He’d stopped wearing clothes a while back. He might have turned himself to stone, but he was too afraid not using the rest of his magic in so long had stopped him from using it well, so he’d been practising with that instead.

They came closer and closer and stopped right next to the fountain. One of them look in and grunted and pulled back. “It’s dry,” he said to the others, and even though he spoke in Irish his accent and some of the words were queer. “We stay for a day at most.”

“It’s a wonder there’s anything left worth looking,” grumbled one of his companions.

“No one’s been here recently,” said the lead man, “so there might be something left.”

“There’s some in the monastery,” said Tadgh, and his voice came out less rusty than he thought it would, but none of the men were looking in his direction.

“Don’t be daft,” said a third man. “That’s the first place the raiders would have looked.”

“Who’s being daft?” demanded the second man. “Who said that, anyway?”

“I did,” said Tadgh. “If’n I tell you were the loot is, can I come with?”

They stared at him. He stared back.

“The statue talked,” someone whispered, and then the tension broke as the leader snorted and cuffed the culprit across the ears.

“Idiot,” he snapped. “He’s just a man.”

“Can I?” Tadgh asked again, and the leader looked at him calculatingly and then shrugged.

“Why not?”

Tadgh nodded and hopped off his ledge and showed them where the only things of value remained. He’d gathered them all in one place over the course of a week, just to have something to do, just in case he decided to leave.

While they were sorting it he went and found his clothes, and when they were done they took him out of the town in their wagon. He fell asleep to the sway and the mule’s hooves and the men muttering. When he woke up he was in a town even larger than the one he remembered, and it was because a well-groomed man with callused fingers yanked him out of the wagon and closed irons around his wrists, and told him he’d been sold to a king across the sea.

 

Tadgh wasn’t the only one on the ship. There were nearly a dozen other men all chained together, some of them tan like him but some with dark skin and broad faces, or swarthy like they’d been born already darkened by the sun. They weren’t given any food and there was no room to piss or shit except where they sat, and the rock of the ship made some of them ill so that they lunged over their fellows to the side. Then the sailors would cuff them back to their seats and they would all huddle down against the water’s cold spray.

The ship only had one mast and a dozen men to sail it, and was too small and shallow for a proper hold, so Tadgh and the rest were left shivering in bilge-water amidships where the deck opened up to the hull. It might have been a small ship, but it could go down the river. That was useful. That explained where the Lochlannaigh had come from so long ago.

Tadgh tried to count his heartbeats but he kept losing track when he dozed, and when he woke up properly they were surrounded by water and he glanced back and couldn’t see land at all. His chest clenched. He was further from home than he’d ever been.

Then he told himself he was an idiot. He didn’t have a home. He never had.

The sun burned Tadgh’s skin browner and the salt made it sting. Tadgh tested his magic fingertip by fingertip and felt the change in the wind, and looked up, and even though he couldn’t see many clouds in the distance he couldn’t see much at all past the rail and the deck anyway.

Maybe he had imagined it. He hunkered down in his chains and closed his eyes and tried to sleep with the sounds of the sail flapping and the Lochlannaigh speaking in languages Tadgh couldn’t understand. He must have managed it, because he only woke up when the ship lurched too suddenly and threw him up against the men on either side.

The ship rose higher and fell longer, and buffeted from this side to that in the roaring wind. Tadgh struggled upright, his wrists stinging from the cuts the irons left. One of the other men was whimpering and holding his arm close. Someone else was gagging, heaving into the bilge, and then the ship tipped again and they all went tumbling, caught only by the chains.

Up on deck barely a few feet away their captors were shouting, pulling up the sail and checking the lines, their feet thudding the wood. Tadgh could barely hear them over the sound of the wind and the rain, and the numb cold in his ears. It wasn’t long before it felt like Tadgh had never known anything past the sway and the shudder and the seep of water and other things. He remembered almost burning in a fire, and even had the calluses on his feet and fingers to prove it, but right now all he could imagine was being cold and wet and starving.

There came a panicked shout and something struck the ship, and water poured in over the deck and through the open hold, and for a moment Tadgh’s world was dulled until all he could hear was a whoosh and a boom and the thud of his heart. Then the water pulled back and yanked him against his chains and he coughed and gasped for air, and wasn’t the only one.

Someone was shouting. They sounded like names. Tadgh looked up and saw the sailors on the deck, and there were only seven of them left.

One of the sailors came down into the hold, wading knee-deep in the water, and lifted a hammer and struck off the nearest prisoner’s irons. He said something, voice raised over the storm, and shoved a bucket into the man’s hands, and pointed at the bilge. One by one he struck off their chains, cuffing anyone who tried to have at him and shoving them into lines to pass the two buckets back and forth, bailing out the water.

No one wanted to get up on the rail, so Tadgh did, gripping the side with his knees and holding out his hands for the bucket. Every time it came to him he dumped it over and exchanged it for the next, over and over, and all the while the rain whipped in his eyes and the wind blew right through him, until his fingers were numb and his head felt as though it was stuffed full.

The ship’s bow lifted, and Tadgh gripped the rail so he didn’t fall, and looked up into a rising mountain of frothy water. The ship groaned and so did the men on it, but still the ship climbed that wall of a wave, slowing and slowing.

Tadgh heaved himself up and leapt for the deck and it came up to meet him, and he staggered as he landed. He ran, dodging past rope and reaching hands, scrambling up wood to the bow. They were almost vertical, now, and they weren’t going to make it; the wave was already breaking, and it was going to come down on them.

Tadgh gripped the rail with his knees and thrust out his hand like he was slicing the air, and the water before them burst with spray as it split. He caught a glimpse of movement behind it and put out his other hand and with a grunt forced the air to part the wave as white froth started sheeting down. The ship shuddered under him but the bow was already falling on the other side, and Tadgh dropped and clung to whatever he could find as they plummeted down the wave.

They hit the trough and suddenly everything went dull and dim and Tadgh breathed in water. His heart slammed into his ribs but before he could panic his head came back into the air and he gasped for it, and almost choked on salty rain. He looked up and his heart skipped to see the rise of another wave before them, but it was just to the side; they slid past it instead, the ship tilting.

Tadgh scrambled off the bow and his knees were shaking so hard that he fell to the deck. There was no time to even try to get to his feet; someone grabbed his shoulder and heaved him bodily up, and Tadgh blinked as two different sailors wound a rope around his waist.

The one holding him looked fierce, even with his hair tangled and face stained with salt. Tadgh remembered him. He was the captain.

The sailors tied off the cord and tugged on the other end and Tadgh saw it pull taut against the bow and the rail and any hook or sturdy place nearby; then the captain put him roughly down and Tadgh blinked to realise he was tied to the bow with just enough rope to move. The captain cuffed him and shouted words that Tadgh didn’t understand. But he pointed, and Tadgh automatically followed the gesture, and saw the wave looming ahead of them.

Unsteadily Tadgh got to his feet and the ropes pulled taut around his thighs and waist. They were strong, sturdy—he could be the safest person on the ship right now.

The wave rose as a wall before him and Tadgh lifted his hands, and gathered the air.

It didn’t seem long before Tadgh forgot being chained to the ship, forgot that technically he was _still_ chained to the ship. It didn’t take long before there wasn’t anything except the wind and the rain and the waves, rising over him again and again, until his hands trembled every time he lifted them. Every now and then someone would bring him hardtack and he’d chew numbly and swallow and it hit his stomach like a stone, or someone would put clean water to his lips and he’d drink.

When the waves finally lowered and the wind started to ease, he barely even noticed. He was done. They’d barely made it over the last few waves. His magic hadn’t been more than a spurt against them. He drooped in his restraints and was vaguely aware of callused but gentle hands cutting away the rope and pulling him away, and laying him down where the only thing he could feel was the much gentler sway of the ship under him.

 

Some time later Tadgh became aware of something other than the warmth of sleep and the rock of waves. It was the voices that did it, because they were raised, and at first Tadgh let them wash over him. Then he realised they were speaking in a language he knew.

“—dangerous, not to mention foolish, having a witch on board!”

“You Catholics and your witches,” growled one of the Lochlannaigh. “You’re obsessed.”

“And _you_ ought to know better,” shot back a man from Tadgh’s own homeland, “than to believe those old pagan stories of your own heathen ancestors—”

Tadgh heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh and winced.

“I’m not such a fool as to abandon the powers that live in the earth and sea,” said the Lochlannach, “especially not an elf, and especially one that’s fallen straight into my lap!”

“A witch will be the death and damnation of us all!”

“An elf can be our salvation,” said the Lochlannach, “and if you take issue, to Hel with you, and off my ship at the nearest opportunity.”

The end of the argument was punctuated by a growl and a muttered, “If we _survive_ that long.”

Tadgh heard footsteps and rolled over and blinked up at the captain in the shadow the man cast over him. “Do you speak the language of Hibernia[1], Elf?”

“Ériu,” Tadgh corrected. “Aye.” He yawned and sat up and looked around. Most of the men who’d been chained were back in them, but some weren’t and were instead glancing nervously at the captain, the scowling man at the stern, or the Lochlannaigh in general. When Tadgh looked to his other side he saw the shore gliding past, near enough to beach if they wished. “Where are we going?”

“Constantinople,” said the captain. “The Romans are at war and they need conscripts.”

Oh. Well, that made sense and explained why the cargo was men. Tadgh glanced at the slaves and felt glad he wasn’t among them anymore. “What’s an elf?”

The captain’s eyebrows rose, and then he laughed. “You’re the Hibernian sort,” he said. “I can’t expect you to know _our_ words for your kind. Elves are the envoys of the gods. People who use magic of air and earth and sea, and act between the gods and the people. You in your land call them Tuatha Dé, if I recall.”

“Ohhhh.” Tadgh nodded like he knew what the captain was talking about. And he did, sort of; he knew the Tuatha Dé, of course, because who didn’t? And he’d long suspected he was one of them somehow, but the way the Lochlannach spoke made Tadgh think that admitting he wasn’t sure was probably a bad idea. Instead Tadgh looked up at him calculatingly. “What now, then?”

The captain shifted from foot to foot and very nearly fiddled with the end of his belt. “If you can see your way clear of forgiving our use of iron against you,” he said, “I’d implore you to join my crew.”

He sounded almost bashful and hopeful at once, like a virgin wooing a lady for the first time. Tadgh grinned. “Aw, aren’t you just the fairest sight for eyes.”

He sprang to his feet and stretched, and noticed that his cuts and bruises had been tended. “I’ve never been on the sea before,” he said, and bowed with a flourish. “I’ll bring as much luck to your crew as it deserves. I’m reckonin’ it deserves a bit.”

The Lochlannaigh at large broke into grins and clapped each other and Tadgh on the backs, and let out a roar of approval. Tadgh staggered and grinned, and ignored the frightened scowls aimed his way. He would live with that. If he had someone who’d protect him, he could live with that _forever_.

 

It lasted nine years. Really, Tadgh reflected, it was a good decent length of time. A _magical_ length of time. And it hadn’t even ended up with him in chains again. Nope, they just waited until he was weary with scurvy and then up and left him on one of the coasts where they’d camped a night.

It wasn’t all bad, Tadgh decided. The new captain had been more Christian than the old, and the members of the crew who’d enjoyed having an elf as company had all died or left. Not that they had been _friends_ , exactly, because he was an elf and they weren’t—they’d always been too bashful for that. But it was a far cry better than the whispers and the fear. So it was just as well the new crew had gone and left him. Life on ship hadn’t been the same lately.

Tadgh still spent the better part of a day staring bitterly out to sea. He hadn’t exactly fit in, but it had been the nearest he’d ever felt, and even though he knew Christianity wasn’t following him _personally_ , it still felt as though it was out to ruin everything he found that might be good. That, or time. He hadn’t changed at all in nine years, while the crew got older. They hadn’t been surprised by it. Sometimes Tadgh had secretly hoped he would start.

At least it wasn’t the ‘torches and pitchforks’ type of fear. It was more the ‘placate and get out of the way’ type of fear. They had left him supplies, anyway, which was better than nothing. They’d even left him his coin … most of it.

The real question was, what was Tadgh going to do next? He knew now that other people like him existed, people who could use magic. The Lochlannaigh had called them elves, but back home they were called faeries. They existed, and Tadgh had never met one of them. Or at least, never been able to _tell_ whether he’d met one of them. He didn’t even know where to start. Where _could_ you start, to find people that were hidden in all the stories? Most heroes stumbled on them by chance or by luck.

Tadgh wasn’t feeling very lucky.

For a few days Tadgh wandered up and down the coastline as much as he was able on shaky legs, squinting up at the stars at night and trying to pinpoint their location. Neither captain had let him have a good look at their maps. Something about elves and mischief, which was fair, Tadgh supposed, but it wasn’t helping him now.

It was at some point during those days, glancing out to sea and mulling about how Christianity was like a disease that hit village after village and never really seemed to go away, that Tadgh started to wonder why he couldn’t go to the people who led Christians and ask them if they could possibly stop, or at the very least stop burning and stoning and exorcising people for being a mite different. The crew had talked about it all the time—some of them were Christian and some weren’t, and even though they weren’t allowed to brawl with one another whenever they talked about religion they’d regularly almost come to blows.

Anyway, Tadgh had heard all about the Holy See and a whole bunch of other stuffy old men in robes who hadn’t even managed to lay with anyone and seemed to be deciding what was what and who was evil, and spreading it all over the world. He knew where it was … mostly. Sort of. In relation to where they had been sailing, anyway, and since they sailed up and down the coastline to camp at night he had a decent idea of the bearing.

So, since Tadgh didn’t have anything else to do except sit and starve on a beach, he set off down the coast in a vaguely easterly direction.

 

He overshot the mark. Just a little bit. Sort of. Alright, it wasn’t his fault; Tadgh defied any starving man to stumble on a Norman bivouac and decline the food they offered in exchange for service. So he might have hurt one of them a little bit when the man attacked him. He’d learned a few things from the Lochlannaigh.

Either way, they were impressed and offered him a place in the company in exchange for food, and Tadgh spent hours listening to them talk about the opportunities in Italia[2]. He wasn’t the only one who got let into the service, even though he didn’t serve the men who led the parties.

It wasn’t a war. No one mentioned the word ‘war’. They just went along making merry, and then they got told to burn this farm or that farm or these crops, or guard this place. There wasn’t a whole lot of training, except that he was given a sword and told to stick the pointy end in anyone trying to kill him.

Tadgh couldn’t be sure how long he was with them. He remembered a lot of marching, a lot of good cheer and good food and a lot of sleeping practically heaped on top of other men and hoping they didn’t notice when he was obviously feeling things people generally thought men weren’t allowed to feel about other men.

He remembered nice days, except occasionally when it rained and was muddy, and standing by fires and trying not to think about the houses they’d burned.

He remembered the first day their company went into battle.

He remembered the company commander yelling orders and men running this way and that, but mostly into each other’s lines where they crashed together in a thunder of steel and flesh. He remembered running with them, bewildered and terrified, and a shouting man swinging his sword, and Tadgh jabbing him with his own sword, and the man falling with a startled expression and a splatter of blood.

He remembered battles and movements all running together, and ending in him hiding under three bodies by a broken cart until there was no one left on the field but the moaning wounded and the dead.

He remembered sneaking away in the night, feeling wretched and ill and knowing that if they caught him they’d kill him because there were _words_ for people like him, cowards and deserters, only the Normans weren’t his people and he had no reason to go around killing the people here like the Normans were. He didn’t have any people, around here. He had no one.

It wasn’t until he stood in a blood-soaked meadow, with mud all over him where he’d crawled to avoid a patrol, and looked around at the crows picking at the dead left where they lay, that he felt like he was the only person in the whole world who was sane.

Tadgh didn’t know where to go after that, but he did know he didn’t want to go back toward the Normans. So he went the opposite without knowing quite what was there.

One day he was trudging in the mud, his feet wrapped with cloth to keep the leather strips on his feet and his arms wrapped around his chest, and the coat he’d stolen off a dead soldier faded because he’d been wearing it for days. He didn’t even hear the jingle of metal at first, and it took the second shout before it sank in that someone was calling, and by the time he looked up he was surrounded.

He couldn’t really protest. They took him into the middle of a camp outside a city and showed him to a very nice tent, and he stood there swaying in front of a man Tadgh was dimly aware was very important. There were lots of other men around too, and they all deferred to him, anyway. Tadgh didn’t care. He was so tired.

_Rome_ , they kept saying, and the word only stuck out because Tadgh remembered that’s where he had been trying to go in the first place.

“What is your name?” demanded the man. “Where is your company?”

“Just a rover,” Tadgh mumbled, the language still alien on his tongue. The man’s eyes narrowed, and seized the lapel of the coat and shook him.

“And you stole this off a man of the empire?”

“He wasn’t usin’ it anymore.”

A moment later his cheek stung with a slap and exclamations went up all over the tent. Tadgh watched one man draw a knife and step forward, and was almost disappointed when the general stopped him. “And the Franks[3]?” he asked coldly. “If you tell us everything you know of the Franks, I’ll spare your miserable life.”

_If it’s a miserable life_ , Tadgh wanted to say, _why would I want it anymore?_

But instead he told them what he knew. It had felt like the Normans were always on his heels, maybe because he didn’t know the terrain. He had no maps, and he kept getting lost in the wilderness and the mountains, and he couldn’t tell what were landmarks.

But it seemed like the soldiers—Tadgh thought maybe they were Romans—recognised some places on the strength of Tadgh’s description. By the time someone took Tadgh away they were all arguing over the maps and he was too tired to care where he was taken, or even the fact that he was chained up to some other men and given some fetid water and hard bread.

They were all prisoners of war and deserters, he found out. That would figure. Tadgh _was_ a deserter—just a deserter for the ‘Franks’. He thought about mentioning that part to one of the guards, but then he wondered whether it would make a difference, what with him wearing a stolen coat, and it felt like too much effort to try.

In the morning he was roused from his sleep by the guards hauling them all up and leading them away, east. They walked for days under the sun all strung out in a line behind a cart, but it was away from the battles, so Tadgh didn’t care. They walked all the way to the coast and then followed it down to where a ferry took them across the sea to Graecia[4].

They walked. And walked. They walked all the way through Graecia. The landscape didn’t change much, but the buildings did, becoming all tall with arches and domes, and finally they approached a great walled city which Tadgh almost didn’t recognise at first because they’d come at it from the land.

The guards let them rest up against a wall and Tadgh looked around dully. There were a lot of people outside the gates, waiting to be seen through customs, and they weren’t even the only group of prisoners. That was the point Tadgh overheard the talk about the slave markets, but by then he wasn’t even surprised. The Lochlannaigh had intended to sell him there anyway, a decade ago. Maybe now it’d just caught up.

It was loud, and the flies were buzzing, and his tongue felt thick in his mouth, and then suddenly the prisoner on the end leapt up and broke for the cover of the crowd, his shackles falling away.

One of the guards shouted and a spear flew, and the man fell, and his blood stained the dirt. It smelled of copper and salt, and thick in the hot air, and Tadgh stared at him as the guard went over and yanked out his spear with a wet crack. Hardly anyone even looked around. People stepped over him like he wasn’t there.

Well, that was one way to get out of it, Tadgh figured. But he had another, and he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought of it until now except that he’d been too tired to think about anything but putting food in his mouth and one foot in front of the next.

But if he kept doing that he’d walk right into being owned, anyhow, so what did he have to lose? Maybe, when he woke up, things will have changed.

An hour later, when the company was shown through the gates, they were two short instead of just one.

 

Time stretched out ahead of Tadgh like he was in the middle of the ocean looking at all the same waves, over and over. When he awoke a village had sprung up around him beside Constantinople’s walls, but it was broken and almost empty, and he stumbled easily into the shadowed alleys. He’d come away with a strange little chip in his wrist, where they’d struck the chains off him to free the other prisoners from his statue, and it hadn’t wanted to stop bleeding for a long time.

Before Constantinople had been the biggest city Tadgh had ever been in, but now it felt like there was barely anyone left and no one cared about the buildings. It made his chest ache when he looked around at places he’d seen before, that had been so beautiful, and now were practically abandoned. He survived there for a while, stealing and whoring, and listened enough to know that the Romans were gone, the empire had fallen to the Normans, and now the only people who cared about the city were the states around it.

While he’d been a statue, Constantinople, jewel bridging the west and the east, had become a decrepit old woman holding on far after her time.

When he learned that the city suddenly felt too small, too old, too _broken_ for him to stay there. Even cities aged, and Tadgh didn’t.

Tadgh went east. He already knew what was west. He already knew there was war and pain and people believing in a stupid God who didn’t do anything to help anyone. Maybe there would be something better east. He didn’t sound like he’d come from Ériu anymore, anyway. He didn’t sound like he came from anywhere anymore. Languages had become all muddled in his mouth.

Whenever anyone asked where he was from, he’d tell them, “Just a rover.” At first he thought that would get him stones and blows, but instead people started asking him for stories and songs, and actually seemed interested in them. It was nice—except that the only songs he knew weren’t his anyway. He couldn’t tell stories of his own, because he had lived for too long to be believed. He told them anyway, like they were just made up, told stories about Ériu and the faeries, and long-ago childhood wishes which felt like wistful embers and nothing else.

It hurt his heart in a way he’d never felt before, until he wished the numbness from the city would come back, but it never did.

But it got him food and shelter, and he was _good_ at it, and it felt like it fitted a lot better than just being a thief or a scoundrel or a whore. It felt like freedom, to be able to wear any mask he wanted, to pretend to be anyone he wanted, to live another life that he could leave anytime it got too sad or painful. He could be anyone, and anything people said didn’t matter because their words only hit the first mask.

It made him laugh at himself when he realised that he’d become a poet like his name, which was silly. Matron had always called him Tadgh because he could talk, even though no one ever believed him when he did. Now they believed him. Now they listened.

He wondered whether all poets felt so hollow inside, except for the twinge in his heart that held back the numbness.

One day there was a group of Mongols in the audience as he wove a tale. Tadgh had seen a lot of them before, all squat and dark but heavy, like immovable anvils that could only be escaped by avoiding them. Usually they weren’t quite so heavily armed, but Tadgh just figured they were soldiers and didn’t pay them any mind.

He should’ve. When he rose to leave the inn’s commons they came to him, a group of three twice his width and wearing swords and all dressed in armour so he couldn’t tell whether they were as wide as they looked.

“You must come with us,” said one of them, and even though the words were sort-of a request, his tone wasn’t.

Tadgh smiled winsomely, because that had gotten very easy, so easy that he smiled more than he frowned, even when his belly was empty and his heart hurt for things he wanted but couldn’t identify. “My deepest, grandest apologies, good sirs, but I—”

“This is not a request,” interrupted the man, and his fellows flanked Tadgh and put their hands on his shoulders. “You are a heathen shaman.”

“I’m not a—”

“Whatever you call yourselves in other lands. You control the powers of nature, and I have heard your stories. They are from very long ago.”

Tadgh’s heart pounded and his mouth felt dry. “I just make them up,” he tried to explain, but the man only looked at him and lifted an eyebrow.

“And the candles, and the cold air? They were simply chance?”

“Well—”

“Bring him with,” said the man to his fellows, and they picked Tadgh up and carried him out of the inn before he could put his wits together, and no one even tried to stop them.

They put manacles on him and took him to a sprawling camp all made of furs and horses, and just as dark and looming as the individuals were. They were like anvils but their camp was like a swarm, landing anywhere there was room and ready at a moment to leave. The sight of it made Tadgh’s gut twist and shrivel, and his breath quicken. Anyone trying to escape from this place would be run down under a horse’s hooves before they got far.

Probably it would be better to try his luck now. He twisted suddenly and shoved at the air, and had already turned to run before he realised that nothing had happened, that the man he had shoved hadn’t even moved. His captor yanked him back into line without any trouble at all, and Tadgh stumbled, and snapped his fingers, and no fire came to his hands.

He couldn’t use his magic. The one thing that had always been close by when he was in trouble, even if he couldn’t use it without attracting attention. The flutter of terror turned into panic and he fought, scratching and biting and kicking out. The memories of being able to fight had been distant for a long time, but what he’d forgotten in technique he made up for with passion, so much that the man even grunted and stumbled and loosened his grip. Tadgh tore himself free and ran right into the man behind, and the three of them held him down until he’d run out of the strength to do anything but hang in their arms, breathing hard and with tears on his cheeks.

They took Tadgh to a tent that looked practically like a hut, one of the biggest ones but the only one with so many guards at the entrances on either side, and pushed him inside, and then left him there. Tadgh stumbled and fell, and curled up on the furs covering the ground while he tried to get his breath back. His whole body ached.

“Oy.”

Someone nudged his shoulder and Tadgh shot upright and scrambled away until his back hit the leather of the tent. He hadn’t even noticed anyone nearby, but there was more than one. The tent had a thick leather curtain in the middle and all those on his side were men. There were five. Most of them weren’t watching, but one was crouched nearby, holding a water-gourd and looking very resigned. He didn’t look very old, but his face was lined and he was thin under his clothes. He wasn’t a Mongol—none of the men were Mongols.

“Here,” said the man, and after a moment Tadgh took the gourd and drank. “So how did they get you?”

“Get me what?” Tadh asked only after he’d drunk his fill, but he didn’t give the gourd back. Instead he clutched to his chest. He couldn’t make water for himself anymore. He might need it.

“Figure you out,” said the man. “How did they find out you have magic?”

 

His name was Ata, from the Oghuz steppe[5], and he had magic. All of the men in the tent, and the women on the other side, had magic. Tadgh sat there in a numb haze while Ata talked, explaining how the manacles had special words on them to bind their power until the Mongols wanted it. They didn’t use it in battle, because it was too easy for someone to turn their magic on the Mongols, but for moving the camp and making the camp they were valuable, Ata said.

“I’m a teleporter,” he said, and then had to explain _that_ , and how he could move from one place to the next in a heartbeat. He was one of the most valuable of all, because teleporters were so hard to catch and keep. He’d been with them for a long time, since Ghengis Khan. “What can you do?”

“Um—I can make fire?” Tadgh said weakly. The numbness was giving way to a thick, ill feeling in his gut.

“An Elemental,” said Ata. “You’ll be useful. Elementals make daily living easier. If you don’t fight and do what they want, they’ll even reward you.”

“Would they let me go?”

One of the other men had broken into bitter laughter, then. No, the Mongols wouldn’t let them go. They weren’t like the Lochnannaigh, who thought elves should be respected. The Mongols knew they were only human like everyone else, and used them like tools.

Parts of Tadgh wanted to resist that thought, but he couldn’t. It had been a long time since he had thought about faeries and having faery blood, and being a hero like in the old tales. The only way he thought about it now was when he told his stories. Maybe that was why his heart hurt so much whenever he did.

He didn’t tell his stories anymore. Not if it meant he might get caught by people like the Mongols. It seemed somehow extra unfair that he’d only find people like him when they were all prisoners.

But Tadgh listened a lot, and he learned things. About magic. About nations. About the Cradles. About how people like him kept hidden by staying inside the cities that normal people—‘mortals’—made. He learned that his not ageing was something that happened to everyone like him. He learned so much that his head felt too full, and all the thoughts clamoured to be heard.

He was almost glad for work. It gave him something to do where he didn’t have to pay attention to those thoughts. At least, at first.

Then the Mongols captured another sorcerer. They heard the screaming from the tent, and Ata opened the flap to look out and ask the guard in their tongue what was happening. Tadgh could even follow along by then.

Ata came back in looking pale and told the others, “It’s a gist.”

They all shivered and pulled away. Tadgh looked around blankly. “What’s a gist?”

“It’s a monster,” said Ata. “A monster made of a sorcerer’s rage and hatred and all his dark thoughts. It’s trapped inside him until he lets it out, but day by day it eats away at his sanity until it takes over. The Mongols kill gist-users on sight, even if they haven’t lost. They’re too dangerous to use.”

“Oh,” said Tadgh.

He saw the gist that night, when the Mongols took all the sorcerers out and lined them up. This one _had_ lost, Ata explained, while defending himself against the Mongols trying to kill him. Now the gist inhabited its owner’s skin. It was chained into the middle of camp, man-shaped but with fangs and claws and spitting and howling, and bleeding where the chains had cut it. Its eyes were black. Every so often it shuddered violently, like there was something inside it trying to get out.

Tadgh saw what the gist did, too. The dozens of warriors laid out for honours. Some of them were just pieces put into a shape and stitched together.

He watched silently as it was beheaded and its head burned and its body cut up and then taken away to be buried separately.

After that, it got a lot harder not to think. He was almost glad to find out that he and Ata and some of the others had been traded to another tribe, headed east to help the invasion that way. Ata said ‘they’ were putting up more of a fight over there, whoever ‘they’ were. Tadgh didn’t ask. Either way, the sorcerers were more needed.

In some ways the life wasn’t too much different to before Tadgh became a poet. The Mongols hit them when they didn’t do their work fast enough or well enough, and they were on shorter rations than everyone else because they didn’t have to fight—just use magic every now and then. But they weren’t allowed out of the tent unless they were working, and it got very boring very fast.

The others weren’t used to that, Tadgh could tell. Except for Ata, nearly all of them grumbled and complained and glared, and in private they derided the ‘mortals’. They made plans to teach the ‘mortals’ a lesson, passing whispers back and forth through the leather separating the men from the women, but never doing anything. Every time, Tadgh just curled up under his furs in the corner and listened.

It didn’t seem to matter which camp they were in. The sorcerers reacted the same. They even treated Ata different—like he was helping the Mongols on purpose, instead of being told what to do.

Ata only shrugged when Tadgh asked. “Teleporters are cowards,” he said. “Our magic is made for running. Most sorcerers like to think they’re better than that, but you hear them talk. They’re no more prepared to risk their lives than I am.”

Twice more Tadgh got traded. Both times a courier came to the camp and then everyone who was needed east picked up and got ready and Ata took them—dozens and dozens, even _hundreds_ all at once—elsewhere in the blink of an eye. He had to. A man held a knife at his throat the whole time.

“I’ve been everywhere,” he told Tadgh wearily one night, when it was just them in a small guarded tent. “All over. One day soon we’ll get to a place where you’ll stay, and then you’ll be lucky to see me for more than a week every few years.”

The way Ata held himself apart made more sense, then. It wasn’t worth making friends with someone who was barely there. After that Tadgh stopped trying to talk to him, and felt more alone than ever even before he’d reached his new ‘tribe’ and Ata had gone again.

The travelling wasn’t too bad. Tadgh was getting to see more lands more quickly than he ever had before. But Tadgh had gotten used to going anywhere he wanted whenever he wanted, and being whoever he wanted. Now he was just ‘the Elemental’, and he could only go where he was told.

Being just ‘the Elemental’ made the hollow feeling worse. He felt as though he was drifting through life without even the anchor of rage and it was just pushing him this way and that.  Even when he made little dolls, just for something to do with his hands, other sorcerers looked at him like he was an idiot and told him that he should do something that would help. Tadgh made the dolls anyway. It was something to do and the children liked them, even if the others called him a traitor.

The thought occurred, sometimes, that he could make himself stone again, but this was the first time he had met other people like him. What if he missed out on something vital because he was a statue? He was learning a lot, even though he wasn’t sure where his mind was putting it.

It was hard to track the passing of time, thanks to all that teleporting. The seasonal changes were different and Tadgh didn’t care enough to start again, and eventually they were moving less and less—following the herds, instead of the war parties, Tadgh heard. It wasn’t exactly a town, because they could still pack up and leave, but it was more like a town than it had ever been, and there wasn’t as much travelling to break up the monotony of the work.

So Tadgh couldn’t be sure exactly when the other Elemental arrived, except that it was sometime when the heat was beating down and everyone was moaning about how Elementals couldn’t conjure ice, as if it would have made any difference when Tadgh wasn’t allowed to use magic in the tent anyway.

The other Elemental was dark-skinned and with the silky hair of the Han[6], though he wasn’t wearing clothes nearly as nice as Tadgh had seen. He didn’t give out his name. He sulked in the corner, glaring and growling at anyone who came close, until the Mongols came in to force him out and help Tadgh dig a well. He jumped in the hole like he wasn’t afraid of all the dirt and stone all around him, but since it meant Tadgh didn’t have to get in there himself, Tadgh didn’t complain.

It wasn’t that he was afraid of small places, Tadgh told himself. He just didn’t like having it all around him like that, unless he wanted it to be.

“I’ve a good mind to show them what one such as I can do,” muttered the other Elemental, glancing up at the Mongols on their horses and with their bows, and arrows in their hands.

“You’d get shot,” Tadgh said, and use a blast of air to break some of the rock with a crack. The other Elemental just grunted and for a little while they worked in silence, with Tadgh gazing down at the stone. He kicked some smaller pieces away. “If you don’t like it so much, there’s always turning yourself to stone,” he suggested. “Everything’ll go fast, then.”

The other Elemental laughed and then realised Tadgh was serious and stopped short. “You must be crazed. I am not going to turn myself to stone. Who knows what will have changed when I wake up?”

“You wouldn’t be a slave anymore,” Tadgh pointed out, but the other Elemental only laughed again.

“I won’t have been _anything_. Better I escape from here or die outright than become part of the scenery like a coward.”

Tadgh didn’t answer, but it wasn’t much different to some things the others had said. They talked and talked about mortals and how they were short-sighted and short-lived, and made everyone change to suit them. Tadgh didn’t see how sitting around and doing nothing was any better than being a ‘coward’. He wanted things to change. He just couldn’t do it by himself, so that meant he had to wait and hope.

He was better at waiting than the others were. He wasn’t afraid to wait for a long, long time.

So he didn’t say anything else as they worked, and he didn’t say anything that night, and he especially didn’t say anything in the morning. He couldn’t, on account of being stone.

 

Twice he woke up still in the tent and twice he put himself right back after blinking at his startled companions. That was one thing that was different from the other times—the same people were there when he woke up as when he went to sleep.

The third time he woke up he found himself in a ship’s darkened cargo-hold, swaying with the waves, and looked around in surprise. Somehow it had never occurred to him that he could be moved while he was a statue, because no one had ever tried. Evidently the Mongols had, though. Probably after the second time he went to stone they decided it wasn’t worth keeping him around if he wasn’t going to let himself wake up.

Or maybe they just got ransacked. Tadgh didn’t mind that idea either.

He lay on a bale of cotton for a long while, enjoying the waves and the smell and the creak of timber. Eventually he decided he probably ought to get up and see what the ship was and where they were headed, and so crept up away from the cargo toward the sound of the crew quarters.

It was a pirate ship, he learned very quickly. Navy ships pretended they were better with uniforms, and sometimes they actually were better with the discipline—sometimes—but pirate ships had a certain something that was just impossible to miss. Tadgh had been on a few of both while he was with the Lochdannaigh, a million years ago, and it was nice to know that some things just didn’t change. Sort of. A lot of things didn’t seem to change, but Tadgh didn’t mind this one being one of them.

Judging by the snatches of conversation in a smattering of languages, they were close to making berth at some pirate port, so Tadgh waited until they had and then slipped off the ship. It took all of two hours to decide that the ship was better than the port, so he went back and volunteered himself for the crew like he hadn’t just spent most of the day eavesdropping to begin with.

No magic. No word of it. Nothing to indicate he was faery, elf or shaman, or whatever the people hereabouts might think he was. The crew was a melting-pot of all different kinds of people, anyway, though the ships had the style of the people from the Land of the Rising Sun. That was because they were, in fact, in the vicinity of the Land of the Rising Sun, which Tadgh hadn’t realised the Mongols had been aiming for. He’d never been there, anyway, so at least that part would be new.

It wasn’t, really, not because it wasn’t different but because he barely set foot on land for the next two or three decades. He spent most of it in ships’ rigging instead, and sort-of lost count. Neither the Land of the Rising Sun nor Manzi, let alone Cathay[7], were too terribly happy with foreigners on their soil, which kind of explained why there were so many foreigners on the pirate ships, if that was the only way they could make their living.

It was a little bit fun, though, raiding up and down the coast and making faces at the incensed Navy ships who tried to follow. Well, alright, it was a _lot_ fun, and Tadgh even bothered to find a whole new ship to move onto when he’d spent long enough on the first that he was starting to draw attention with that not aging thing. And then a third.

And then he had to leave with all his stashed plunder, because a rumour was starting to go around about a spirit haunting the ships and this spirit just happened to have his face.

That was alright, though. He was about done with the piracy and the killing. He didn’t much like the killing, which was why he stayed in the rigging when he could, but after a point there really wasn’t much of a choice.

Songjiang[8] was too hard to leave, at least by land. He looked too much like a Foreigner, still. Tadgh did try, if only because he was so damned curious about what was in the region that they wanted to hide, but after nearly being exploded by a gunpowder cannon he decided discretion was the more pragmatic option. Instead he went west along the border shared with India, where he found a merchant out of the Land of the Rising Sun trying to put together a caravan heading north along the Silk Road.

Well, ‘found’. They happened to be sharing the same table in a crowded inn, and the man had taken full advantage of their sharing the table to make conversation, most of which he made and Tadgh listened to.

Until then, the little wistful ache in Tadgh’s chest had been easy to ignore. It had been there since before the Mongols, but as long as he had work to do and rigging to tend and puppets to make, he could ignore it. But Tadgh sat there listening to the merchant rhapsodise about the west and the fortunes to be found there, and the Crusades, and how the Silk Road could take him all the way to the edge of the Continent in spite of his unworthiness and lack of courage and a dozen other humilities he didn’t actually mean—and all of a sudden Tadgh wanted to go home.

He knew what was in the east now. What was east wasn’t much better than what was in the west. Different culture, same work, same wars, same emotions. But it had been so long since Tadgh had been home that he could barely remember what ‘home’ looked like, even though it wasn’t much of a home. It was the nearest thing he had. Home. Ériu.

How long _had_ it been, anyway? Tadgh tried to work it out while the merchant was moaning about costs and mercenaries and bandits, and gave up. Instead he told the merchant he’d work for pittance so long as he got enough food out of it, and that was that.

“I am unworthy of your grace and charity,” the delighted merchant assured him, getting out his scroll and his quill. “What’s your name?”

“I’m just a rover,” said Tadgh.

“A roving what?”

“Er …” Tadgh floundered while the merchant peered at him, and in the end Tadgh shrugged. “Aw, hell. Put me down as a la-la-kin for all I care.”

“La-ra-kin?” repeated the merchant doubtfully, almost hitting the first consonant but mangling the second like his tongue was rebelling against the foreign sound. Tadgh could sympathise. He could still remember a time when he felt that he would never get some of the strangest sounds right, in some language or another. “Is that a western word? What does it mean?”

“Whatever I want,” said Tadgh, because he’d just made up the phrase anyway, and he didn’t care if he had to sing _la-las_ the whole way back to Ériu as long as he got there. He’d gotten good at being whatever he wanted, anyway. He tried to figure out how many different things he’d been, and lost track of that too.

The merchant chuckled and waved the end of his quill at Tadgh. “I like you. You’re devious.”

“Not really.”

“And polite.”

Tadgh laughed. “You won’t be sayin’ that soon.”

“Truly. I don’t see that very often among foreigners …”

The rest of the night was spent engaged in a game of courtesy, humility, and drinking each other under the table.

Two days later the merchant was dead and Tadgh, in a panic at the man’s bloated face and blackened fingers, found a nice niche somewhere and drew on the earth power, praying to the gods of his homeland that whatever had caused that illness would decide a statue was a terrible place to inhabit.

 

[1] The Classical Latin name for Ireland from the 1st century to about the 16th; whether the Vikings used it or not, I can’t find, but it seems the most likely option.

[2] The area of the Italian Peninsula all the way up to the Alps, though it wasn’t all one nation until the 19th century.

[3] Normans. All western Europeans were known in East Europe as Franks at this time.

[4] Greece, as called by the Romans.

[5] An area on the eastern side of the Caspian Sea. The peoples there were the precursors to the Ottomans (the Turks) and the Russians.

[6] Chinese.

[7] Near as I can find, the region we know as China today was referred to as Manzi (south China) and Cathay (north China) on Western medieval maps at the time.

[8] The county which later became Shanghai. Its name was changed from Huating after the Mongolian invasion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Vikings continued to raid Ireland up until the Norman Invasion in 1169. The Eastern Roman Empire, better known today as the Byzantine Empire, were one of their closest trading partners -- at least when it came to slaves, owing to the many wars the Empire was waging at the time.
> 
> One of these wars included one with the Normans slowly conquering the Italian Peninsula. This invasion took place over centuries; it began with Norman mercenaries seeking fortune and destroying crops, farms and other resources until the various duchies and states accepted their authority. Many of these states were only unified later. The Normans went on to invade the Balkans and lay siege to Constantinople; though they were unsuccessful, the expense broke the Byzantine Empire by the late 11th century and it never recovered.
> 
> The Mongol expansion began in the very early 13th century, and by the turn into the 14th century they ruled most of the Eurasian continent including all of China and the settled parts of Russia, and Eastern Europe.
> 
> 'Wako', or Japanese pirates (many of whom weren't Japanese), were rife along the coasts of China, Korea and Japan during the later part of the 14th century.


	6. The wanderer - part three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: Depression. Semi-suicidal thoughts.

In spite of how many ways Tadgh had wished the world would change during his absences, he was completely unprepared for what met him when he awoke. He did so sluggishly, feeling almost as though he’d actually been asleep but without remembering the dreams he’d had—if he’d dreamed at all. It took some time before he could shake off the heaviness in his limbs and stagger away from his nook.

There was no one left. The town he’d been in, on the border, on the Silk Road leading north—there was no one left. There were corpses so far decayed they were overgrown husks, and the dry stench of heat had sucked all the stink there might have been. It had been a few years at least, if not a lot more. Looking at the dried bodies and hearing the dead silence save a handful of wild animals made Tadgh’s heart pound and his back tingle.

He’d never considered ghosts before, but there were ghosts in this place. He left as soon as he could without even looking for food, opting to try his luck in the wilderness until he knew whether or not he carried the illness himself.

After two weeks of surviving on what he could forage or kill, Tadgh decided he probably wasn’t sick and risked heading into another village. It wasn’t until then that he realised the illness, whatever it was, had spread faster and further than he had imagined.

As Tadgh moved north along the planned route, all he came across were villages filled with nothing but ghosts. Sometimes they had bodies, but sometimes it was as if everyone had fled midway through a day and hadn’t yet had the courage to return. It wasn’t until the temperate lands leaned toward desert that Tadgh even found much evidence of other people, and even then that was at a distance. He’d started to think he was the only one left alive.

He took to talking aloud just to keep himself company while pillaging abandoned villages and caravans, speaking in his mother language so it stopped being rusty and started coming smooth. He still couldn’t remember all the words. The towns became more populated the further west he travelled, but the people were scared and wary. The moment he showed himself they drove him off, no matter how much he tried to explain that he wasn’t ill. So he moved on.

Ériu was the only thing in his head. The only thing left he could find to care about. He’d travelled from one side of the Earth to the other, and had only ever found death and more death. It was like this latest plague was driving him away, back to the tiny island where at least he couldn’t hurt anyone else. It _was_ tiny. Maybe he could find a way to stop being alone there, it was so tiny.

In the end Tadgh couldn’t be sure how long it took to reach the Continent’s coast. He got a little lost in the desert on the way, and stumbled out of it burned and wide-eyed, and talking to the air. It took two weeks lying half-feverish in a monastery’s bed before he got well enough to realise the people he’d been talking to hadn’t been real.

He’d kept talking to the air anyway. At least it was something to keep him company.

He left the monastery as soon as he realised the monks thought he was talking to things that could talk back, and were preparing an exorcism. It was hard to stop himself from talking to the air, but that was alright. He could make puppets and talk to them instead.

There were people on the Continent, at least. Not as many, and some still looked ill, and others looked frightened, but others—labourers and farmhands—looked happier than Tadgh remembered commoners being. He figured out from eavesdropping that so many people had died the ones who lived were getting better pay and land.

There was so much land lying fallow, in fact, that rent was very cheap, and for all of ten seconds Tadgh considered renting some and settling down.

He’d only get bored, anyway. Nothing would ever change on a farm.

Instead Tadgh listened some more while he sold puppets in the marketplaces, and heard some strange things about how the people of Erie had been hit by the plague as hard as anyone, and the news left a hard, cold stone in Tadgh’s gut for the better part of the week until he found out more. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t until he heard someone talking about ‘the natives’.

“What d’you mean?” he asked, interjecting into the conversation at the next table in a tavern’s commons after a hard day’s hawking. “What natives?”

“Never been to Erie, have you?” said the man who’d spoken. “The barbarian tribes who live there. They all went up into their hills and left the good, God-fearing folk in the towns to rot and die.”

“There aren’t any barbarian tribes over there,” Tadgh said blankly.

“Course there are,” said the man impatiently. “They’re a stubborn lot, I’ll give them that—the Normans still haven’t managed to get them to concede. It’s been two hundred years, you’d think the barbarians would’ve realised life in a town is much better than—oy!”

Tadgh got numbly to his feet and walked out, and it was lucky he’d already paid. His heart was thudding in his chest and he heard it in his head.

The Normans had taken over Ériu. Not completely, but enough that people talking about Ériu were talking about _Normans_ and not about _them_. Ériu had been _invaded_ and Tadgh hadn’t even been there to help stop it. Maybe even those of his people who’d been Christianised would have accepted a faery, if one was trying to help them save their land.

Instead he’d been across the Continent, fighting _alongside_ the Normans, up until he’d cut and run because he couldn’t understand _why_. His head rushed hot and Tadgh leaned against a wall and breathed, and felt tears on his cheeks, and thought that if he’d had to fight for Ériu he could understand why the Romans had done the same for their own land.

What had been the Normans’ excuse? Money? Hah. Food? Fine. Alright.

“Maybe all the Norman soldiers fought for food,” he mumbled to himself. “Maybe they had to, to eat. But then why would they laugh and take trophies and pretend it was all for the greater good?”

Why did his chest hurt so much? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hurt so much, except that he felt as though he’d missed out on something important for the first time in his life. Change had come to Ériu, bad change, and he hadn’t even been there to do anything about it either way.

“What _could_ I have done?” Tadgh asked aloud, and then shook his head. “Probably nothing, that’s what. You’re a ground-snivelling faery. You’re not even _proper_. You saw the way the others acted. You ain’t proper at all.”

“Oy there,” someone said, and Tadgh looked up to see a handful of people watching and whispering, and a man with a sword frowning in his direction. “Who’re you now? What’s that you’re saying?”

“Nothing,” said Tadgh, and then realised he was still speaking his homeland’s language and switched. “Nothing. Just talking. Just a rover. I’m going now.”

Tadgh slunk off between the buildings, sniffing and wiping his cheeks, and didn’t look back to see whether the militiaman had watched.

It was hard to find a ship going to Ériu. It had been one of the last places hit by the plague, and still was affected, and people were reluctant to go over. In the end Tadgh found a small ship being sent by the Church, with missionaries and replacement clergymen and Tadgh spent his time curled by the bow, making puppets and trying to convince himself he wasn’t actually sharing a ship with a bunch of bad spirits. Sometimes he mumbled to himself. It was difficult to stop, even when he noticed them watching.

Probably not a good idea. They’d stage an exorcism right there on the ship. So he finished the cross-stitch to make an eye in the puppet he’d just made, and pulled it over his hands, and turned it around to glare at himself.

“About done are you?” the puppet growled at him, and Tadgh widened his eyes.

“Got no idea whatcha mean. I was good and _fast_ this time.”

“That’s what your father said.”

One of the most upright clergy by the rail choked and Tadgh grinned to himself, but some of the other passengers laughed. That was better. It felt like forever ago since Tadgh had been able to make people laugh, and no one cared how much he talked if the puppets talked back. It was one more reason to keeping making them, even though he had only started again for something to do with his hands.

“Oy.” One of the women by the rail crouched by him and poked at his puppet.

“Oy,” the puppet growled at her, and snapped at her fingers. “Mm. Good ladymeats.”

The woman laughed and her green eyes fairly glowed against her dark skin. She took her fingers back and yanked on a lank of the puppet’s hair. “You’re good.”

“Who, me?” asked Tadgh, widening his eyes.

“I know,” said the puppet. “But I don’t fall into bed with every flattering vixen.”

“Good. That would give you a reputation.” She grinned at Tadgh and Tadgh grinned back, and it even felt genuine. “I’m Guinevere.”

“I’m—just a rover. Sometimes I’m even a singing rover. I know all the la-di-das.”

“Don’t we all,” said Guinevere. “Singing, dancing, the whole lot.” She shrugged, and tossed her plaited locks over her shoulder, where the wind caught them and dragged them back across her face. “My troupe is heading over to Erie to give people things to think about other than the doom and gloom and going to hell blah blah blah. It’d be criminal to let a puppet-maker like you go to waste. What d’you say?”

It took a few moments for that to sink in, and in the meantime Tadgh sat there blinking and feeling very confused and stupid. Guinevere poked the puppet. “Oy. Make your handler talk. I think I broke him.”

“He’s fragile,” said the puppet, or rather Tadgh made the puppet say without thinking because he’d gotten so used to words coming easily to his lips. “And on his behalf, I accept. You’re a prettier sight for stitched eyes, anyhow.”

“Good,” said Guinevere, and rose, and held out her hand. “Welcome to the troupe.”

 

They got off in Loch Garman[1], which wasn’t as badly hit as Duibhlinn[2], but was still pretty bad. The clergymen were hurried off quickly while one of the officials directed the troupe around the ‘safe’ areas. Tadgh was pretty sure ‘safe’ had nothing to do with it, while they hurried past a pile of bodies across the lane due to be buried. The men digging the trough were coughing and their fingers were black. Tadgh shuddered and looked away, and so did the rest of the troupe.

The illness was going away, explained their guide. Not quickly, but fewer had died lately. At least the troupe would have plenty of places to stay, and lots of people who wanted something to alleviate their spirits.

There were five people in the troupe, and no strict leader. Mostly people either did what Guinevere said, since she made and maintained most of the puppets, or obeyed a big man named Marcus, who had skin so dark he could blend into the night and threw his voice so well that even Tadgh got startled when a random nearby barrel talked at them. Sylvia was tanned and callused from her years in the militia and took care of their security; pale, delicate Beatrice was a puppeteer who could sing so high she made Tadgh wince or so low Tadgh thought Sylvia’s dog was growling at him; and swarthy Dietrich was a tiny man who acted as the troupe’s lead propmaster.

None of them seemed worried about his presence. The moment Guinevere had introduced him as ‘Just-A-Rover’ Beatrice had said to Marcus, “See? That’s attractive. Less is more. ‘Just’ is understated. It’s humble. No woman wants a man who advertises the size of his balls. Where’s the mystery in that?”

“Alright, alright,” said Marcus, throwing up his hands. “I won’t use the joke. Wonderful. What are we going to say instead?”

“What joke?” Guinevere had asked, pulling Tadgh down on the crate next to her, and just like that he’d been a part of the discussion about their new act. None of them had even commented the fact that he needed the puppet to talk for him during the whole journey across the sea.

It wasn’t something Tadgh had meant. He’d never had trouble talking to people before. It was just that the thought of talking to any of them all on his own made his stomach flip over so hard that bile rose in his throat. What if he misspoke? What if they didn’t like him? Better use the puppet until they were better acquainted.

It didn’t matter much, though, because the others talked more than anyone had heard Tadgh talk except himself, and it was nice to listen to. They were happy. They were _fun_. They wanted to make people laugh. They really, really liked making people laugh. Watching them made Tadgh’s chest ache fiercely in a way he hadn’t felt since he’d been at the Mongol camp, only this time it was different, because he wanted so desperately for them to like him that he, well, he couldn’t talk.

Their first show was tense, owing to all the death and uncertainty and whatnot, and on Tadgh’s part at least because it was his first show. Well, not his _first_ first. His first working with someone else. He was so nervous his knees kept jiggling, and then Sylvia’s dog Muttonhead appeared and put his head on them so Tadgh had to pat him instead.

He didn’t realise until afterward that Sylvia had sent him over on purpose. Not until she sent him a wink, in fact, when he was all flushed with pride and fun and the fact _people were laughing_.

After the first show they had a better grasp on what people wanted to see. Some of them didn’t go very well. Some of them went really, _really_ well. So well they were practically rolling in money.

“I think we should go somewhere else,” Beatrice announced one night while dropping her share into a bag.

“Dublin?” asked Sylvia.

“Dublin!” Dietrich laughed. He had a kind of puffing laugh that made him sound like a tiny pair of bellows. “Sickness was worst there.”

“So that’s where we’ll be most needed,” Beatrice pointed out.

“I’m not _quite_ ready to rot away before I die.”

“Waterford isn’t far from here,” Guinevere pointed out, “and Cork isn’t far past that.”

All these new names. The area Tadgh had come from hadn’t called those places those names. He wished, again, that he’d been able to stick around for longer. At least he’d been able to see a map and knew, generally, what they were talking about. Probably be a good idea if he started using them, too, or they’d never stick in his head.

“Isn’t Cork getting close to native territory?” Marcus said doubtfully.

“We’ll be fine,” said Guinevere. “We’ve _got_ a native.” She pointed to Tadgh and Tadgh didn’t realise it until they were all quiet and looking at him thoughtfully, and his heart pounded.

“Uh …”

“I heard you teaching one of the children,” said Guin. “And you keep wincing whenever one of _us_ try to say anything in the local languages. You grew up here, didn’t you?”

“Uh.” Tadgh’s feet shuffled and he wondered whether they thought he thought he’d get away if he ran. Was his face red? His face was red. Mutely he nodded. He had—even though so many of the words were different that sometimes he felt like he was learning a whole new language, it was still, in some fashion, _his_.

“ _Could_ you get us into some of the local spots?” Beatrice asked.

“Boy can hardly speak half the time,” Dietrich muttered, lifting one of the packs to make sure everything inside had settled properly.

“He wasn’t having any trouble on the stage.”

Tadgh swallowed. “It’s—been a while.”

“Just don’t tell me you’re a long-lost nobleman’s son,” said Guin with a grin. “That would be a little too much legend for me to handle.”

Tadgh startled himself by laughing and cut himself off with the startle. “I’m not,” he mumbled, and resisted the urge to fidget even more. He didn’t win.

“Good. Then we won’t get anyone after you for ransom. Waterford it is.”

Waterford turned up a huge crowd, a number of huge crowds, and a lot of coin, and by the end of it Tadgh was vaguely surprised when he realised he’d stopped using the puppet to talk for him. It was the way the others asked him for advice. What did the locals like? What sort of humour should they use? What were the jokes going around this season? Tadgh dredged up his childhood memories and taught them a few phrases that were always silliest used by foreigners who didn’t know what they meant, and were even sillier used with a wink and a whistle by those who did.

Some people didn’t like it. Tadgh didn’t much care. They were the people who’d come in like they owned a country that wasn’t theirs.

After Waterford was Cork, and by that point it felt like Tadgh had been with them his whole life. Except for one thing. One tiny, eensy thing Tadgh felt like he could almost forget. If he forgot his magic, maybe he’d even age.

After Cork they made their way inland, stopping at taverns and farmsteads and accepting invitations from the people who belonged to the island. They didn’t go into Dublin. They did go around its borders, cautious because who knew where the illness might still be hiding, and came back down to Wexford and Waterford again.

In retrospect, Tadgh really should’ve been expecting things to end there. Things coming full circle and then ending was sort of an appropriate commentary on his existence. Well, if they made it to full circle to begin with, but Tadgh was happy. He was too happy. Leaving aside the fact he hadn’t used his magic in a while except for little things the others didn’t see, and even then he had started wondering if he couldn’t drop a hint or two.

The attack came sudden. One moment they were trundling along in a cart at the back of a merchant’s caravan, trying to practise their lines and losing the thread every five minutes because someone made someone else laugh and then they were distracted by discussions. The only reason Tadgh even looked up was because some part of his brain recognised the tenor of that whistle, and he saw the driver of the caravan in front clutching at the arrow in his throat.

“Take cover!” Sylvia shouted. Tadgh was already vaulting over the caravan’s side, yanking Beatrice down with him. Muttonhead barked wildly, but Sylvia kept him close with a hand on his collar. If he rushed off into the trees they’d never get him back.

Someone had jumped onto the caravan in front and pulled it askew so it blocked the road. Tadgh heard Marcus cursing as he pulled their pony up short. Merchants didn’t carry their valuables at the back, but any idiot who saw the troupe work in the last town knew they had enough coin on them to risk biting the merchant’s arse.

They came out of the woods, three of them—four if Tadgh included the one nocking his arrow and looking at Marcus from the wagon ahead. Not really good odds if everyone wanted to get out alive. Tadgh glanced back; the caravan had continued on around the bend, where they wouldn’t be able to see past the rocks.

“All your goods and coin and we’ll let you live,” said one of the bandits.

Guin was cursing quietly behind the wheel. “Dietrich? Give it up.”

“But our coin—” Beatrice began.

“Better that than dead.”

“And your women,” added the bandit.

“Well, screw _that_ for a sack of potatoes,” said Guin. “Dietrich?”

Dietrich grunted as he dropped a small chest to the ground between them and the bandits and then ducked his head like he was trying to avoid getting shot. One of the bandits stepped forward and opened it. The box’s inside exploded in a cloud of powder and Tadgh heard the exclamations and coughs go up. Tadgh heard an almighty bark and the bandit with the bow whirled to aim at Muttonhead as he jumped, and in the same moment Marcus rolled off their wagon and Sylvia leapt up and shoved a sword through the bandit’s groin.

Tadgh grabbed one of their bags and pulled Beatrice along with him, keeping their heads down until they could throw themselves with Guin into the back of the other wagon. Marcus was already in the seat, calming the panicky horses and turning them back down the lane, with Muttonhead and Sylvia beside him.

Only, there was a problem. There wasn’t four bandits.

There was seven.

One of them was on a horse and surged up the road toward them, swinging his sword at Marcus before Sylvia stepped in to block it with her shield. The other two jumped from the rocks onto the wagon proper, and Tadgh punched one before they had time to wonder how a puppeteer had learned to hit so hard. Dietrich gave him a kick for good measure and the bandit tumbled off and went rolling. Behind him, Tadgh saw the other bandits dragging their horses onto the road and mounting in a hurry.

Beatrice was hiding up at the front of the wagon and Guin was fending off the second boarder with her dagger. Tadgh leapt to help her before Dietrich, but Marcus gave a warning shout and yanked the horses’ reins, and instead Tadgh saw the log that had been dragged across the road. His hands snapped up and he grunted as the log went spinning into the air, and with a snap he sent it flying back toward the bandits behind them. It wasn’t even as hard as saving a man going overboard in a gale.

It didn’t land where he’d wanted it to—only the lead rider was almost hit and he yanked his horse off the road rather than get tangled in the bandits behind them. They blew past and Tadgh snapped his fingers and threw a fireball at one, who yelped and flinched and fell off. The other shouted and pulled up his horse. Tadgh turned and saw the bandit who’d been harassing Marcus and Sylvia dropping back, and then the wagon turned a bend and the bandits had fallen behind.

Belatedly Tadgh remembered the boarder and whirled, but Dietrich was rolling his body off the edge of the wagon. Beatrice was already winding a bandage around Guin’s arm, looking determinedly down at it, but Guin was looking up at Tadgh, her face grey and her eyes wide.

_Oh, gods, what did I just do?!_

Tadgh opened his mouth but Guin looked away and the words failed, and when Dietrich came back he sat down beside the women and didn’t look Tadgh’s way. Tadgh snuck a glance at Marcus and Sylvia. Marcus was concentrating on the road, but Sylvia was looking right at him, and her hand was on her sword.

Quietly Tadgh sat on a sack in the opposite corner of the wagon, and didn’t try to fight the sound of the wind whistling past their ears.

 

Marcus drove the horses until they reached a clearing off the main road. He hadn’t pushed them as hard or as far as he could have. There wasn’t a point. The bandits weren’t going to follow. He drew the wagon up under a tree and silently the troupe gathered the things they’d managed to rescue and got off the wagon. Tadgh got off with them and stood there yanking on his sleeve.

“Um …”

Guin held up her good hand. “Don’t.”

“I was just trying to help,” Tadgh mumbled.

Marcus was staring by one of the horse’s heads, as if trying to get his fill because he hadn’t been able to earlier. “You made the log _fly_.”

“He threw fire at the bandits,” Beatrice said.

“A _native_ ,” Dietrich muttered, packing one of their coin-bag with rags to replace those that had fallen out. He glared at Guin. “ _Long-lost nobleman’s son too much legend for you to handle_.”

“How the bloody hell was _I_ meant to know he was a—” Guin snarled and then cut short and took a breath and turned away.

“Skills like that could be useful,” Sylvia began, but both Guin and Dietrich rounded on her.

“A damned _demon_ —”

“Have you paid _any_ attention to the stories—”

Both of them cut themselves off suddenly, Guin paling and Dietrich reddening, and neither looking in Tadgh’s direction. Sylvia looked embarrassed on their behalf. Beatrice was biting her lip. Marcus was staring, just staring. Only the dog looked as though everything was dandy.

Tadgh forced a smile. If his heart was beating, he couldn’t feel it. He felt empty, like all the emotions he’d had moments ago had grown too powerful for him to feel them anymore. The smile made all of them flinch. He caught his reflection on Sylvia’s shield and the smile looked real. It looked like he meant it. “I’m going.”

He turned around and picked up his pack and walked into the forest.

Part of him hoped one of them would stop him.

None of them did.

Tadgh walked until his feet hurt too much to walk anymore, but the empty feeling stayed. So he found a good rock beside a nice stream, and found a comfortable position to sit on it. He looked down into the stream and smiled. It made his cheeks bunch up. It made his eyes sparkle. It made him look happy.

He kept the smile, and turned himself to stone.

 

Tadgh woke up and shook snow off his head. It fell in his lap and soaked through his trousers, and he stared blankly down at it, and turned himself to stone again.

 

Tadgh woke up. It was sunny. Blinding. He turned himself to stone.

 

Every time Tadgh woke up, he turned himself back to stone. There wasn’t anything else to do. The empty feeling didn’t go away. He had spent so long hoping the world would change if only he let enough time pass, and now he just wanted this awful feeling to go away.

But it didn’t. He started feeling groggy when he woke up, as if he’d been so deeply asleep that nothing felt real instead of just not living. He couldn’t exactly _remember_ being stone, but he remembered the empty feeling stretched into his past as if it had surmounted the little issue of not having a heart to hurt.

Finally he woke up and sat there listlessly on the rock, and the idea of turning himself to stone was nearly as bad as not. He gazed dully down at the stream, and meant to do it anyway, but there was a birdsong in the trees and it kept interrupting his intent to stop living for a while. Then abruptly the birdsong cut off and there was a flutter of wings and the sound of something crashing through the woods and _barking_ , and a dog burst through the bushes and almost collided with the rock.

Tadgh stared down at it. The dog clambered to its feet and whined and its tail went _whapwhapwhap_ against its sides. Its fur was matted, brown if not for the dirt and the leaves and the everything else, but it was fat on its toddling legs, and there was a rope collar.

The dog whined and put its paws on the rock, and Tadgh opened his pack, and went sorting numbly through it until he found the jerky he vaguely remembered having, in a life that felt like a dream. He dropped it in front of the dog. The dog attacked it with a snarl that wasn’t nearly as vicious as it was meant to be.

An hour later Tadgh realised he’d just spent that time watching a dog try to eat a piece of jerky almost too chewy even for dogs, and that he hadn’t even wanted to turn himself to stone in the middle of it. And he found, to his distant, numbed surprise, that he didn’t really want to turn himself to stone now he was at the end of it, either.

Tadgh got up and stretched, and the dog stopped growling and trying to eat the jerky and looked up, licking its mouth.

“Come on,” he said to it, holding out another piece of jerky. The dog got up and followed him, followed him all the way to the campfire where its owners were, and Tadgh slid back into the forest before they were halfway through the invitation to sit with them for a while.

Where was he going? He didn’t know. He was just a rover. He could go anywhere.

 

It turned out that the problem was less ‘where could he go?’ and more ‘where could he go where he wouldn’t feel really awkward around other people’. Even then, ‘awkward’ didn’t even begin to cover the feeling. At least when he was alone he could pretend that was how it was meant to be, pretend that the empty feeling was peaceful. When there were other people around, he looked at them laughing and talking and felt like ashes inside. He preferred feeling empty.

The taverns weren’t too bad. There weren’t too many true hostelries these days and they were usually in the centre of towns, but the taverns could be more secluded. True, there were people making merry, but drinking made everyone equal and no one thought anything of someone drinking alone. Tadgh never stayed the night, though. He wasn’t sure he could bear being alone in a room full of others who didn’t know or even care who he was.

So Tadgh moved from tavern to tavern, spending the coin he’d earned a long time ago like it was water. If he paid for others’ drinks, he found, they liked him. Only for a little while, but they liked him. It was something to do until he figured out what to do, and it lasted all the way from summer into autumn and winter.

By midwinter Tadgh arrived at the tavern by the fords of Ballinasloe. He’d got there a lot earlier than he’d expected given the snows the last couple of nights, early enough that the tavern wasn’t even very full yet. It was a traveller’s tavern, placed to catch people going to the castle and labourers who worked nearby. It was the end of the day so the quiet wasn’t going to last long, but for a little while Tadgh could pretend he was _special_.

“Hello hello hello hello hello,” he greeted the innkeeper’s family and the few patrons who were around, walking right up to the bar and dropping his bag, and leaning on the counter with a winsome smile. The barkeep’s daughter giggled. The barkeep’s son scowled, so Tadgh turned the same smile on him, and the young man faltered, and the daughter giggled again.

“I’m feeling _extra_ generous,” said Tadgh to them both, and upturned a bag of coin onto the bar. “How many people d’you reckon would have to come in before all this ran out?”

Both son and daughter goggled.

“Are you celebrating something?” asked the innkeeper as he came up behind Tadgh, and Tadgh swivelled on his chair and spread his arms and lay back against the bar.

“Life.”

“Are you a troubadour?” asked the innkeeper determinedly. He was a big man with a lot of muscle, the sort of man that should have been a blacksmith except, Tadgh knew, blacksmiths were a lot gentler than innkeepers. Innkeepers had to deal with _people_ day in and day out. Innkeeping took _guts_.

“Yep,” said Tadgh with a shrug. “Need me to do a song and dance?”

“No,” said the innkeeper, but he looked amused and pushed the coin back toward him. “That’ll serve everyone in here right now and another dozen besides.”

“Guess it’s the lucky evening for the next dozen folk to walk in, then, innit?” Tadgh grinned. “Don’t tell ’em. People get shy around angels.”

The innkeeper laughed and within a few minutes everyone there was served and toasting Tadgh from their various tables, mostly because he hadn’t exactly been quiet while he ordered. Tadgh waved cheerfully and looked around. Already two more people had come in, and he watched their faces suffuse with surprise and pleasure at the unexpected gift of a free drink.

He spent the next half an hour like that, letting the smiles fill him up even when it was people who didn’t know he was the one who’d paid. Somehow, that kind of made it even better.

Until the eleventh man to come in. He was tall and lanky, with long hair half pulled from his braid like he’d been wearing it for a long time without bothering to brush it out, and a week’s worth of beard. He carried with him that sort of air that made everyone turn and look, only he didn’t look back. His face was frozen blank and his eyes had that hard, distant stare of a man people really, really didn’t want to bother, which was why they all looked away as quickly as possible.

Except Tadgh. Tadgh looked at those eyes and saw himself.

The man strode up to the bar and dropped his pack. “Beer.”

“It’s free,” said the daughter, putting one on the counter for him with admirable composure. Of course, working with _people_ like an innkeeper’s family did, you had to get used to people being … well, people.

“So’s the next,” Tadgh added, bouncing over and putting another coin on the bar with a bright smile, and landing on the stool beside the stranger. “Hello there, tall handsome stranger!”

The man grunted and took a draught of beer, and choked on it, coughing. Tadgh almost whacked him on the back and instead turned to lean back against the bar with his elbows, rocking back and forth on the stool. “Don’t choke,” he said cheerfully. “It’s a bad thing, choking. I once saw a man who tried to swallow a whole Armenian plum[3] pit for a wager. Have you seen Armenian plums? Their pits are all smooth on the sides and then sharp on the ends. _Not_ good for eating.”

The man ignored him, and even though drinking fast had made him choke he went back to the beer as if he was trying to get drunk as fast as possible. He half spluttered the whole way, like a man who’d barely drank anything before in his life and now had nothing left to do but drown everything at the bottom of a mug.

Quietly the barmaid put the next mug down, and the man picked it up and went about drinking that, too. It was almost fascinating, the way he went about it with a sort of quiet inexorability. Tadgh put down another coin.

“They’re better than _peach_ pits, I s’spose,” he went on. _Thudthudthud_ went the stool’s back against the bar. “Peach pits are all nobbly on the outside, and fatter. An apricot pit you could down if you aimed it sharp-points first, and didn’t mind it hitting your belly when it reached the bottom, but a peach pit would hit all the sides and get stuck on the way there.”

The man put down the mug and picked up the third the barmaid delivered. His hand was trembling and his expression had turned wooden, but his eyes were the kind of glassy which said the drink was working. It had to be; two beers that fast, and he wasn’t used to drink?

“The _m_ _ankay_ _ **[4]**_, now.” Tadgh held up a finger. “A mankay is a killer. Coconuts are kind of just wishing, because they have all their flesh on the inside and then nothing but milk in the middle. They don’t count. But a mankay has a pit the size of a _fist_ and—oy?”

A tremble ran through the man, a tremble very much unlike the one in his hands; it started at the back of his neck and travelled all the way down his spine and made his shoulders twitch like they were preparing to force something out. And the man’s eyes were dilating. Fast.

The bottom dropped out of Tadgh’s stomach and for a moment he remembered the shredded Mongols laid out in a row so strongly that the beer smelled of blood. The stool crashed to the floor as he jumped off it and yanked on the man’s arm.

“Alright, this way, here we go—”

The man’s arm swung around so fast that Tadgh just barely managed to duck it, and even then he felt the strength in the blow from the tumbling in the air. The man rose off his seat like a bear unfolding, all towering wiry fury. His eyes were wide and glassy, and not completely black. Not yet.

Maybe Tadgh still had a chance.

The innkeeper was hurrying over. “Oy—”

“No, don’t—”

The gist-user spun and his hand snapped out and the only reason Tadgh got there first was by shoving the air behind him. He and the innkeeper went under the blow in a tangle of limbs and Tadgh rolled and was on his feet again in an instant. Someone else was coming up behind the gist-user so Tadgh sprang again and landed on the gist-user’s back as he turned, wrapping his legs around his waist and leaning back until the gist-user stumbled away from the idiots in front of him holding hoes and clubs.

Unexpectedly the gist-user fell backwards and Tadgh gasped for air as all the man’s weight landed on him. His grip with his feet loosened and the gist-user rolled back upright with a sort of grace that was more efficient than beautiful, and really, really frightening. He strode toward the other inn patrons.

Coughing, Tadgh snapped fire into his hands and threw it at the gist-user’s back. The man screamed, beating at his back with his fists, yanking off his leather vest. Tadgh crawled to his feet and now the mortals were pointing their weapons at _him_ as well as the gist-user, and they were shouting and screaming and whatnot too, but that really didn’t matter.

The gist-user turned toward Tadgh and his eyes were bulging and enraged, and there was blood in his mouth like he’d bit something but Tadgh figured probably was more because of something else. Ata had explained it. Gist-users didn’t traditionally have fangs until after they’d lost.

His eyes weren’t black yet, though. Not yet. Not _totally_.

Tadgh turned and bolted through the door and heard the gist-user howl and the crash of glass as he followed, ripping the door off his hinges. Tadgh’s breath puffed white in the cold and the frost on the road made his boots slip, but the river was just over _there_ and if anything could shock a man out of a drunken blood-frenzy doomed to turn him into an _actual_ demon, maybe it’d be a river in winter.

The river edges had frosted over but the middle was still breaking up the ice before it could do the same to the rest. Now all he had to do was—

He heard a snarl practically by his ear and put on a burst of speed, flattening his palms in preparation to leap the river too late for the gist-user to turn aside. His foot crunched on a film of ice and he slipped and skated forward with a yelp, and the next moment he hit the icy water with a shock that froze everything inside him.

His body panicked and thrashed against the second weight that hit the water behind him. Numbness had set in almost at once, but his mind was still clear. Tadgh beckoned the water and it pushed him up and his head broke the surface with a tiny little gasp that didn’t get him any air. He tried again and his lungs unfroze enough that he managed to get a proper breath, then he looked around and saw shouting men on the bank—at least, he assumed they were shouting, their mouths were opening and shutting even though he couldn’t hear anything through the roar in his ears—but he couldn’t see the gist-user.

Tadgh beckoned the water again and it sent him colliding against the far bank. He gripped the snow and it almost felt warm, and pulled himself out, and looked back again. A dark figure broke the surface a little way down, so Tadgh plunged a numb hand back into the water and felt between the bits until he found the water carrying the limp body, and made a wave send him up against the bank too.

There were _definitely_ people shouting. His head was filled with a weird _throbthrobthrob_ Tadgh would have attributed to his heartbeat, except it was too distant and not hot at _all_ , and dimly past that he could hear the people on the bank. He was shivering, and couldn’t even feel it. He pressed a hand to his chest and pulled all the water off him, and forced some warmth into his clothes until they felt like they were burning, even though they weren’t.

He was cursing too. He could feel the words tripping over his lips, barely.

Tadgh forced himself to his feet and staggered over to the gist-user. The man’s eyes blinked open when Tadgh leaned over him, but they were groggy and confused. Drunk, but not going black. Not anymore. Instead he was so pale that the blood on his lip stood out holly-red.

“Come on,” Tadgh said, and heard his voice come at a great distance. He put a hand to the gist-user’s chest and the man flinched, and then Tadgh took his hand away and all the water came with it. He pulled the gist-user’s arm over his shoulders, against him so the man could feel the warmth in his clothes. “B’fore they call the militia.”

The gist-user shuddered but it was a different shudder this time, a great wracking cough that got all the water out. He pushed up with one hand and Tadgh pulled, and they staggered into the woods. The labourers had found a way over the fords. The shouts were closer now, and clearer because of the river’s distance and because Tadgh’s ears were coming unclogged, except for that _throbthrobthrob_. It was the cold, he knew. It was the body’s warning of illness.

“This way,” said Tadgh, and _now_ his teeth were chattering, and that was a good sign because it meant he was warming up. He pulled the gist-user between the trees, following the landmarks he’d made when he’d come up to the town. He didn’t sleep in taverns. He slept in the woods. There was a tree around here with a hollow under the roots, where he’d planned to spend the night.

They came at it from the opposite direction and fell over the ridge the tree’s roots had made. The gist-user hit the ground with a grunt and Tadgh landed almost on top of him, and then wriggled around, panting and with fingers that ached with returning blood. “Over here.”

He yanked on the gist-user’s shirt until the man crawled toward him, and Tadgh pushed him into the hollow, and then stood up to backtrack. He sent blasts of air along the snow to cover their footprints, and picked up the trail and stomped it in another direction before climbing a tree and springing from one to the next until he reached the one where the gist-user was hiding.

Tadgh hopped from root to root down to the hollow and peered in to make sure the gist-user was still there. He was, blinking drowsily and still shaking.

“Nearly done,” said Tadgh, low but cheerful, and scraped up snow and leaves and twigs. The gist-user grunted again as Tadgh backed into the hollow, squeezing into place in the man’s lap. Tadgh arranged the debris until it covered them, shoving water through to the other side until there was a thin layer of natural frost over most of the gaps. Not all, because they still needed to breathe, but enough that they couldn’t be seen.

Then there was stillness and silence aside from their hard breathing and both of them shivering, and the distant shouts and crunch of snow. Tadgh leaned back and pulled the gist-user’s arms closely around him, partly to give them both more room and partly because he was the warmest thing in there, and the gist-user really, really needed warmth. He rubbed one of the gist-user’s hands between his, pulling in more heat but stopping just short of a flame.

Tadgh stopped shivering first, but the gist-user stopped soon after. Tadgh felt his head on his shoulder and the tension in his body ease, and heard his breathing even out, but the gist-user was warm enough against Tadgh’s back that Tadgh could let him sleep.

The labourers looked for longer than Tadgh thought they would. Their shouts of fear and rage turned methodical, except for a shout of discovery when they found the tracks, and then their voices went off into the distance. Even then, Tadgh could hear them faintly, voices filled with frustration, until the little skylights had grown dark and Tadgh fell asleep with the night.

 

Something shifted under Tadgh’s back and Tadgh snuggled more deeply into whatever ship’s cradle he’d managed to find this time around, murmuring indistinctly. Then someone pushed him and he hit something that gave way beneath him and sunlight burst against his eyelids. He landed on something soft but wet with a yelp and opened his eyes, rubbed them, and looked around blearily.

Snow. Snow and woods. Not a ship’s cradle.

His hands ached with the cold of the snow and his trousers were going wet, but the gist-user was unfolding himself from the hollow, bit by bit to keep from knocking his head on the roots. He was thin, but didn’t seem to be terribly good at folding himself up to be unseen, so it took a little while and by then Tadgh had gotten to his feet and shaken all the water out of his clothes.

When had he last slept so good? Before he was last a statue, for sure.

“Good morning,” Tadgh said cheerfully, using the snow to scrub his face and then grinning at his companion until his cheeks bunched. The gist-user grunted and straightened up, and looked around. It wasn’t in confusion. Tadgh wasn’t sure if this sort of man ever got confused, or just waited until they knew all the details before moving on.

“Are you hungry?” Tadgh asked, stretching. “I’ll bet if we go back to the town we could filch a coupla things. Figure they owe it to us anyway, trying to kill us and all.”

The gist-user moved off without a word, boots crunching on newly fallen snow, and for a moment Tadgh hopped from one foot to the next, and then decided he didn’t have anything better to do so he may as well follow. The man needed watching. He scrambled up the ridge to tip-toe across the roots over the man’s head.

“What were you trying to forget, anyway?” he asked without thinking, and then because he couldn’t make things much _worse_ he added, “Saw one of you before, once. What was left after—and before he was killed, I mean—I’m gonna change the subject. Oh, look, berry bush!”

It was far too late in the season for berries, however, and neither of them stopped for it. Tadgh tried again. “Are you looking for the road? I can show you the road. Are you looking for a particular _bit_ of the road? I can show you that too!”

The gist-user stopped and turned and looked at him, and for a few moments they stared at each other expectantly before Tadgh caught on and sprang into action. “Oh! Right! This way, for the road away from the Ballinasloe fords. I scouted these woods yesterday, y’see, wanted to save all my coin for giving people merriment, and you know taverns, I mean, rooms are full of beds and all and it’s just not fun having to share a bed with a stranger—”

The snow made everything around them still and peaceful, so it seemed as though Tadgh’s voice was the only sound in the world. He was just making a list of the tavern whose rooms he’d avoided and stopped to catch his breath when the gist-user said: “My sister.”

“And _then_ —huwhhat?” Tadgh craned his head over his shoulder, almost tripped on a root, caught himself on the air and jogged up a step so he could spin and land and walk backwards. The snow behind him dissolved under the light film of air he used to track his path.

The gist-user’s face hadn’t changed; it was as shuttered as it had been all morning. His eyes had, though—they didn’t look so far into the distance. They didn’t look _at_ Tadgh, either, but they were closer to home. “She died. Old age. She was the youngest.”

“Oh, gods, this not ageing thing sucks a pair of elephant’s balls, dunnit?” Tadgh complained, spinning back around and throwing up his hands so that the air gusted everywhere and snow rattled off branches. “ _Just_ when you’ve got all settled and everything squared away and maybe even found a coupla people who actually kinda _like_ you, it’s all gotta up and move again! D’you know how many _ships_ I had to change over so’s no one cottoned on? D’you know how hard it is to change ships when half ’em don’t make berth for ages and just when you’re thinking you can swing it you realise you left it just a _little_ too long and now everyone’s giving you looks and whispering and it’s just so _awkward_ and ooh, there’s the road!”

Tadgh snuck a glance behind him as they trudged up the bank keeping the road clear of snow. The gist-user didn’t seem to react to the flagrant display of magic at all. He hadn’t last night, either, but then he’d been a bit busy then.

He wasn’t like the other sorcerers Tadgh had met, all that time ago. He dressed like a mortal, for one, like someone who didn’t bother to put on airs, and he did everything like he knew exactly what to do, all the time, instead of sitting on his arse and waiting for someone else to do it first.

He _was_ looking at Tadgh with an expression Tadgh wasn’t sure how to interpret, except that it felt like he was being _seen_. Not just seen but … sort of … _memorised_. Not judged, either, but … analysed. It was chilling and thrilling at once.

“Who are you?” asked the gist-user, and Tadgh spread his arms.

“Just a rover! Roving minstrel. Roving troubadour. Roving song-and-dance man. Kin to the la-las, the roving la-la-kin!” He bowed with a flourish. “Rover Larrikin, at your service, Mr Handsome Man.”

He’d never said the name out loud before. He’d never had reason, or been too afraid, though he wasn’t sure why he’d be afraid; it just felt as though it was something he ought to keep locked away in his heart, the only thing he truly _owned_. The only thing that had come from all that time spent living and not living that was worth having, and he hadn’t wanted to share it, because everything else he shared he lost.

But saying it made his chest feel light and rushing with warmth, like it was a weight he hadn’t noticed all this time. Like he was _someone_. Like he hadn’t been _anyone_ , no one at all, before now, and now he could be anyone he wanted.

That was what the name meant, after all.

The gist-user frowned. “Larrikin? I’ve never heard that word before. What does it mean?”

Rover shrugged. “Nothing. Everything. Whatever I want. Whatever I need. Who’re you?”

The gist-user turned away toward the road and stepped out into the middle of it. “Shudder. Anton Shudder.”

“Bet you can make all the ladies shudder, too,” said Rover, and Shudder gave him a blank look that Rover liked to think was secretly disbelieving. He smiled winsomely and clapped his hands. “Where to next, big-boy? I can’t keep us warm all day. I mean, I probably _could_ , but then I wouldn’t be any good for anything fun after. Unless you want to start the fun early.” He glanced up and down the road. One direction led past Ballinasloe, but he also knew there was a lane off it they could use to skirt around the town. The other led away.

Rover pointed toward the town. “Let’s go this way!”

Shudder moved down the opposite direction, and something buoyant in Rover’s chest started to die. “Or I can go this way and you can—go that way,” he mumbled, letting his arm drop.

Shudder glanced over his shoulder with a veeeery slight frown. “Are you coming or not?”

The buoyancy met with warmth and it filled Rover up so completely that his cheeks ached with the smile, and his eyes filled with tears. “And by ‘you’ I mean ‘we’, of course!”

He bounded over to Shudder and fell into step beside him, and felt so light that he bounced on his toes with every step. “So anyway, as I was saying, _ships_ are really only good for a decade at the _most_ , but you’ve gotta be careful to time the whole jumping berths part right or else you’ll wind up in the middle of the ocean and only a barrel full of rum—”

He couldn’t stop talking even if he tried, but that was alright. Shudder didn’t stop him, either.

 

\- finis

 

[1] Wexford, after the Norse Veisafjpror—‘bay or inlet of the mudflats’.

[2] Before the Vikings settled there were actually two Irish settlements on the river: Duibhlinn, which the Vikings claimed, and Átha Cliath, from which the modern Irish name for Dublin, ‘Baile Átha Cliath’, was derived.

[3] Apricot.

[4] Mangoes. They were cultivated for centuries in Asia, but they weren’t popular on the Continent until the 17th century, and there was no English word for them until the late 16th.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Black Death outbreak spread from Asia west across the continent from 1346-1353. Ireland was one of the last places hit, and initially only the settlers were affected; the native Irish were able to flee into the mountains and only suffered an outbreak some years later. The devastation was such that villages all over the continent were left totally empty and property rental prices fell significantly, from which many labourers benefited.
> 
> The town of Ballinasloe was only built in 1585, but the ford had been in existence for quite some time and there were Norman castles in the area from about the mid 13th century, which indicates some measure of population in the near vicinity.


	7. The brother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: Non-explicit attempted rape; suicidal thoughts; cannibalistic thoughts; gore.

The daylight was fading over the silhouettes of the houses when Aodh trudged down the lane, thumbing a splinter in the handle of his mattock. He would have to go out and hew another grip before this one broke off; the blade was too awkward to use without it, and he didn’t have the leather to bandage the end otherwise.

Candlelight was cast over the middens and he glanced at them as he passed, then stopped and looked around. No one nearby. Not even someone who could be a shadow. He slung the mattock over his back and vaulted over the wall, and used the midden as cover while he picked out the remains of a burned pie. Lamb and mash—excellent. There might even be enough left for him.

He cradled it in his arm and crept back over the wall, and continued his way down the lane behind Carraig Thuathail’s[1] wealthier houses, highest on the hill and edging toward Barryscourt Castle. He’d just have to be careful not to be seen, or he might be mistaken for a vagrant—or a thief.

It wasn’t thieving if it was from the garbage.

It was almost full night by the time Aodh reached home at the bottom of the hill, where the land turned to marsh and the houses were a ramshackle cluster at the mercy of the elements. Wickerwork was showing through the mud walls, and the beams sinking into the soft ground; the weave of the roofs were mouldy. Aodh would have to replace some of the walls and straw before winter.

But it was home, and the dim light of a single candle shone past the holey leather curtain. Aodh ducked his head so he didn’t bang it on the doorframe, shouldering past it and pulling the wicker, mud-plastered door closed behind him. He was met by the damp warmth of the fire to the shack’s side and the raucous noise of—he counted quickly—eight people.

“Save me!” Sadh shrieked, racing toward him, and Aodh caught her around the waist and heaved her onto his back so she didn’t squash the bag of pilfered pie. She hid her face in his neck, giggling madly.

“Give us the maiden, mortal,” growled Brin, fingers flexing like claws.

“Give us the maiden,” Conán repeated with an identical expression as his twin, albeit on an entirely different face. “Or we’ll—”

Aodh hid his smile, lifted an eyebrow and hefted his mattock. “Or you’ll what, vassals of Deuce?”

They glanced at each other. “There’s tickling,” said Conán.

“Or pickling,” Brin offered.

“Or fleecing.”

“Or licing.”

“I do still have some lice in my blanket.”

“Get over here and help me with the potatoes or I’ll pickle the both of _you_ ,” Siomha threatened, a basket on one hip and a blunted knife in the other. A knife she pointed at her husband—gangly and amused, not much older than the fifteen-year-old twins. “You. Put them to work.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Eoghan with a straight face. He rose and put his shepherd’s crook around Brin’s neck, grabbed Conán’s shirt, and hauled them both protesting to the corner of the shack owned by the cauldron.

“Whatever was the cause of that?” Aodh asked Sadh, glancing sidelong to see the fuzz of her plaits circling her head.

“The Little Miss and me were learning about heroes today,” said Sadh eagerly. Little Miss was the wealthy merchant’s daughter Sadh accompanied as a playmate. Mostly he worked out of the castle, but he kept a house at the top of the hill and sometimes even sold to the villagers. “We read out of a great big book! Have you heard of Marc Antony, Aodh?”

“Yes,” said Aodh, hanging up his mattock on the nail by the door. “He was a very famous Roman general from a very long time ago.”

“ _He_ says he was de-scend-ed from a pagan god,” Sadh informed him. “It said in the book.”

“Was he now?”

“He couldn’t’ve been,” said Sadh. “Do you know Heracles?”

“I can’t say I do.” Still carrying his sister, Aodh stepped around Brin and Conán wrestling on the floor and gave the bag to Siomha. She peeked in and her face lit up, and Aodh paused to realise how many lines had been on her face beforehand. Something was amiss.

He didn’t ask. Not yet. Not and waste the moments of peace she was giving him.

“He was a Greek half-god,” Sadh said. “Marc Antony said he was descended from his son, and that’s where he got his name, Antony, because the son’s name was Anton. But he just made it up, because there aren’t any records of Heracles having a son called Anton, and if there weren’t any then how did Marc Antony know what his name even was? It’s all false. He’s a false hero.”

“And thus the monsters felt themselves safe enough to pursue a pretty young lady?” Aodh asked.

“Mhm.” Sadh put her cheek against his and squeezed his shoulders tight with her thin arms. “But then you saved me, Aodh. You’re the real hero.”

A startled cry came from just outside the other doorway leading toward the marsh, accompanied by the sound of potatoes hitting sodden ground. “Mór!”

“Fox!” came Mór’s gleeful response.

“It’s a rangy _mutt_ , not a fox!”

Aodh shrugged his shoulders and, smiling, turned his head enough that Sadh could peer at him. “Would you care to take this hero’s place and rescue your sister, please, milady?”

“Which one?” Sadh demanded, her cheeks dimpling with the impishness of her smile, and Aodh laughed.

“Your choice, milady.”

She slid off his back and ran out the shack’s second door, where Betha’s voice was lifted in a scolding. By now Mór would almost be in tears, or so focussed on whatever had her attention that she wasn’t listening. She was older than Sadh, but acted younger—born with the melted features and child’s manner of a simpleton, and oblivious to Betha’s needs to keep their household running smoothly.

It wasn’t Mór’s fault, but Betha was often equally oblivious to her siblings’ need for a softer voice and gentler hand. She couldn’t afford it. That was right—she had to keep them in line. Aodh was the one who could afford to give smiles and hugs when he came home from a hard day’s labour.

“Aodh,” Siomha whispered, and Aodh glanced down at her and saw some of the lines had returned. She’d picked up a package hidden behind her stool, and abruptly Aodh knew what she was going to say, and some of the indulgent good will left him.

“Rúadhán,” he said with a sigh.

“I sent him out to get bread and he hasn’t come back,” Siomha said, glanced toward the marsh door and handing the package to Aodh. Aodh hefted it and felt the weight of coins. Aichear’s militia’s wage had come in the mail today, it seemed, and just as soon as they had it most of it was going to vanish without Betha having ever known it was there. “Quickly. I’ll tell Betha you’re the one who went to get the loaf.”

Aodh followed her glance toward the marsh door and nodded, and stepped back around Eoghan yanking the twins apart, exiting through the front.

There was no gaol in Carraig Thuathail, not with Barryscourt so close, and with most of the old ways still having their influence a dedicated gaol wasn’t needed. So the first place Aodh went was the bakery, and sure enough there was still a candle burning in the window and Garbhán was sitting in the doorway. He was a cross between an English shire-reeve and a brehon, Garbhán; learned enough to know the laws and willing enough to sit on anyone who owed a fine until their family paid.

He didn’t really say much. Aodh arrived and Garbhán nodded at him, and got up and went into the bakery. It still smelled warm and bready, and made Aodh’s stomach rumble. Rúadhán sat sulkily near one of the ovens, tugging rhythmically on the rope which led from his wrist to an iron spike too high for him to reach.

The baker’s husband sat by him on a stool, glaring, and he rose when Aodh entered to glare at him too. _He_ didn’t say much either. He just held out his hand.

Wordlessly Aodh counted out the coins and handed them over, and then added another coin and said, “We need a loaf, please.”

Five minutes later he walked out again with Rúadhán on a leash tied to his belt, the two of them equally silent, and carrying a small, singed loaf of bread. The purse in Aodh’s pocket felt very light, with Aodh’s wage practically the only thing left. It was barely enough for one. Sometimes Aodh wondered if it wouldn’t be worth selling himself into service—the bondsmen in the area were all richer than Aodh was. What was the point in remaining free if he couldn’t pay for his siblings?

“Aodh!” Aodh turned and saw Seamus waving by the tavern’s doors, and then stop quickly when he spotted Aodh’s scowling shadow. Seamus came to them instead. “I was going to ask if you finally decided to come have a drink with us,” said Seamus, glancing down at Rúadhán, and Aodh heard Rúadhán scoff.

“Not tonight,” said Aodh simply.

“You’ll miss all the fun.”

“So you always say.”

“I mean it,” said Seamus, and he glanced down at Rúadhán again. “Most of the village men will be there. For … uh …” He coughed pointedly. “You know. Defence.”

“You’re going after the werewolf tonight?” Rúadhán demanded, and Seamus gave up on any pretence and shrugged awkwardly.

“Probably. His lordship’s there, anyway, with half his militia down from Barrymore. If you can make it you should come, Aodh. You can swing your axe and mattock harder than anyone.”

“I don’t have an axe,” said Aodh. The mattock was better for softening lime and breaking roots.

“With _you_ , that won’t even matter.”

Aodh hesitated. If Aichear had sent his wage, that meant he’d also sent a letter. Sadh was the best reader of the family—Aodh couldn’t read at all—and if he helped with the werewolf then he’d miss it. But it was his duty as a man of the village to help with its defence, and the thought of the werewolf tearing into his own family … no man could do nothing if his presence would help ensure that never happened. Maybe he could convince Betha not to reuse the paper before tomorrow night, and Sadh would read it then.

“I’ll be there,” he said. “Later.”

“We can go now,” said Rúadhán.

“Absolutely not.”

Rúadhán’s face fell back into a thunderous, stubborn scowl. “If I want to go werewolf-hunting, I will.”

“I’ll tie you to the house, first.” Aodh nodded at Seamus. “Until later.”

Then he moved off, tugging pointedly at the rope around Rúadhán’s waist until his brother’s tense defiance cracked enough that he trudged resentfully after.

 

Aodh was late to the tavern. When he and Rúadhán got home they found that Betha had killed and butchered Mór’s ‘fox’, and Mór had started crying, and Betha had gotten angry, and it had taken long enough for everyone to calm down that no letter-reading was going to happen that night. But they did eat well, better than they had in months. The mutt had wandered past the wrong house.

The tavern was still full when Aodh got there, but groups of three and four were departing through the door. Aodh waited for them to pass and then slipped in. Men looked around and Aodh could tell the strangers, because they looked startled at his height and gave him instinctive space. There was still smoke in the room, and people moving, but Aodh saw Seamus hovering near the bar and Aodh slipped into the spaces between the patrons, trying not to be so tall, until he came to his friend’s side.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Seamus said, looking relieved.

“There were some matters to pursue at home first.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” said Seamus. “You’ve got one of the strongest swings, and there were lots to see who would go out first to try and lure the werewolf out of the Goat’s Hole.”

“That would be us, I assume.”

“You could at least _try_ to look frightened, you know,” Seamus muttered as they followed a few of the other men out the tavern’s back and took a torch from one of the purveyors outside, walking beside the marshland up the gentle slope of the hill to the woods.

“Why?” Aodh asked, changing the mattock in his grip until he was at least somewhat assured the handle wouldn’t splinter if he used it. Anyone receiving injuries tonight had better beware—the slightest chance it was the werewolf who’d done it, and that man’s life wouldn’t be worth spit.

“It would help _me_ feel better, for one.”

Shadows hung heavy among the trees, and twigs snagged at Aodh’s hair as he ducked his head to follow Seamus off the path. The woods felt close and heavy, and even Seamus lost the nerve to speak. Here and there was movement and the flicker of firelight, and the mutters of other men dulled by the trees. Sometimes they even heard the creak of leather, and once the sound of a hoof falling.

Aodh shivered and resisted the urge to wrap his arms around him, but he walked back and forth along their stretch of ground to keep the cold from setting his muscles. Seamus hugged himself and stood there peering into the gloom. “Maybe it’s still in the Hole.”

“Maybe it’s wary of so many men out at once.”

“It’s a monster, Aodh, not a person.”

Aodh shrugged. “Wolves aren’t stupid.”

“Werewolves aren’t wolves.”

“And yet.”

Seamus grumbled wordlessly, and time went on. Now and then the moonlight shone through the clouds and into the trees, turning the space between the shadows silver. The moon hung heavy and full, and even Aodh couldn’t help but look up at it every now and then. The werewolf _had_ to be out. It had to be.

Something crunched in the forest and Seamus jumped and Aodh raised his mattock, but the shape that stumbled from between the trees was too small to be a wolf, and standing on two feet. At first it was only a panting shadow pushing itself from tree to tree, but then the light caught its face and Aodh saw the scratched features and tangled hair of a woman.

“What are you doing out here?” Seamus demanded, stepping toward her to take her arm. “It’s not safe!”

Aodh looked up at the moon and then back at the woman and her wild eyes and her pinched features, at the dirt ground into the lines of her skin and her clothes. She giggled, high-pitched.

“Not safe!” She giggled again and a chill ran down Aodh’s back. There was something wrong with her eyes. He’d thought it was just shadow but the blacks were large, covering the colour. Her chest was heaving and her whole body trembled, and when she tried to pull away from Seamus the tremors made her stumble. “Not safe not safe not safe—”

“Seamus,” said Aodh quietly. “Come away.”

“What?” Seamus rolled his eyes up toward the moon. “She’s not the werewolf. The moon’s out.” He turned back to the woman to coax, “Come along, goodwife, we’ll get you away from here.”

He touched her arm and she snarled and whirled and her hand shot out. Seamus’s head jerked sharply to the side and he sank limply to the ground. The woman whimpered and clutched her chest, bending over it.

“Not safe not safe not _safe_ —”

Aodh’s blood rushed with energy. His fingers trembled and he gripped his mattock tighter to stop them, and took a cautious step forward, still far out of reach. The dull rustle of his footfall made the werewolf look up. The blacks of her eyes were bleeding into the whites, and there was blood on her lip.

“It’s coming,” she whispered, and shook. “It’s coming, not safe, it’s coming it’s coming it’s—”

She grunted and bent over herself and Aodh sprang and brought his mattock down. She jerked back and the blade grazed past her face, and she howled and lunged. Aodh twisted but she turned, and he thrust the mattock forward so she was forced to dodge. She snatched at the adze with her open hand instead, wrenching the mattock out of his grip. Aodh dove for Seamus’s axe and rolled and spun, bringing it up as a shield. The werewolf’s claws splintered the handle and Aodh thrust the axe at her and it bit into her chest.

The werewolf roared and gurgled as an arrowhead appeared in her chest through her back. With a grunt Aodh pushed the axe deeper, his arm shaking but still managing to hold her away from him. She jerked with other arrows and tried to bring up her hand, but Aodh gripped her wrist and felt the bones crack.

Her eyes were black, he saw with detached fascination. Completely black, without any white at all.

And she was still alive. She shrieked and her feet pushed the ground and Aodh’s heart pounded as she actually began to drive him _backward_ , trying to wrench one arm from between them and the other from his grip, her fangs snapping at his face. Her back bristled with feathered arrow shafts.

Then there was a shout and Aodh jerked back from the sword that took off her head, and her body went limp on him. Aodh lay there trembling, one hand still in her chest. Someone yanked her off and the axe wrenched out of his grip, buried deeply in some bone or another, and Aodh flexed his shaking hand.

“You’re alive,” said his lordship Barra Mór, sounding surprised, and he straightened up and shouted toward the other men in the clearing. “Physician! Get the physician!”

“I’m not hurt,” said Aodh roughly, but he was still shaking.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” said his lordship, still standing over him with the sword drawn. Of course he was. Just in case Aodh was going to turn. His lordship looked around at the other men hanging back, too fascinated and repulsed and terrified in equal turns to come closer. “Does anyone know this man?”

“Aodh,” said someone from the crowd. “He’s from the fields.”

“Family?”

“Nine siblings, your lordship.”

“And the one that died?”

Aodh let the interrogation flow over his head without much more than idle surprise that his lordship wanted to know names. He took deep breaths, slow breaths, and by the time the physician arrived the energy in his body had eased. He submitted quietly to the examination, ignoring the man’s trembling flinch at the sight of the werewolf’s body and the blood on Aodh’s clothes.

Finally the physician straightened up and announced, “No injuries.”

Everyone still in the clearing relaxed, and his lordship sheathed his sword. “You’ve done a service tonight, Aodh-from-the-fields,” he said. “I’m sorry for the fate of your friend.” He didn’t wait for a response, but looked around. “You men from the village, return to your families,” he said at large, his voice carrying. “Take the care of your dead. My men will beat the forest in case there’s another tonight.”

Someone offered Aodh a hand and he took it and was pulled to his feet, and walked a few paces to put the feeling back in his unsteady legs. He went to join the other men to bear Seamus back to the village, but his back itched from the debris on the forest floor and every shadow looked as black as the werewolf’s eyes.

 

His lordship’s men were in the village for the next few days, and then he took his entourage, save some of the youngest of his militia, and left. It was for the village’s protection and to give the militia some much-needed experience both, but no one in the village could miss that their sergeant was indulgent and dismissive. He liked to spent most of his time at the tavern, and the young men under his guard—most of them Aodh’s age, some of them older—took after his example like ducks to water.

When Seamus was buried, with all due precautions in case the violence of his death raised his spirit, the soldiers stood the edges of the burial grounds and watched, but Aodh saw them talking and laughing to one another, and pointing toward the young women.

His chest burned with affront. Seamus had been a friend. A little foolish, but a friend. He deserved better than for half the attendees at his funeral to be so disrespectful.

Aodh walked away instead. They had the blessing of his lordship. There wasn’t anything that could be done, and Rúadhán was there. The last thing Aodh needed was to set an example that would lead to his brother trying to pick one of their pockets. They weren’t native, even if they’d been born in these lands; they lived by the rules of kings across the sea, more likely to call death for a transgression instead of just a fine.

The villagers didn’t like it, either. It wasn’t just Aodh looking at the militia with a belligerent eye. Even Garbhán was starting to look frustrated. The laws he upheld meant nothing to these men, and they treated him like an upstart peasant instead of the authority he was, following their sergeant’s dismissive lead.

“Maybe you could go have a swing at them instead,” muttered Bairre, one of the other field-workers, as they trudged up the lane past the soldiers carousing with a jug and a set of dice.

“Sedition,” said Aodh.

Bairre spat. “They’re descended from _Normans_.”

Aodh only shrugged.

By the week’s end the village was a boiling pot. The young soldiers grew cockier by the day, strutting about and leering at the village women, harassing chickens and drinking the tavern dry.

Usually Aodh went about the back lanes to scrounge in the middens for scraps, but he’d been popular the last few days and one night didn’t manage to escape from Bairre’s company before they reached the village. Several of the young men were outside the tavern with tankards and cigars, leering and calling to passing young ladies. Bairre’s face was stony as he watched, and he fingered his pick.

“Don’t,” Aodh said quietly.

“They’re disrespecting us,” Bairre muttered back. “Too far from Barrymore Castle to bother, are we, save when a werewolf comes. Now we’ll never be rid of them. At least the werewolf only killed.”

Aodh couldn’t disagree. A monster did what a monster did, but this constant insult, this degradation and wanton abuse of their resources for petty idiots who demanded respect they hadn’t earned? Aodh said nothing and walked on, but he didn’t stop Bairre from glaring either, and possibly he should have. One of the soldiers caught the thunder on Bairre’s face and swaggered over before Aodh could get them away.

“What’s that, then?” the soldier demanded, pointing and listing slightly to the side. “Is that how you treat the men who saved your hovel of a town from a werewolf?”

Bairre stopped. “I didn’t see any of _you_ fighting,” he snarled, and shook off Aodh’s hand on his shoulder. “Aodh here was the one who did all the work. Where the hell were _you_? Snivelling in a bush, I imagine.”

The soldier looked up at Aodh, and up some more, and Aodh’s height only made him sneer through his drunkenness. “So you have a giant. How long did it take to teach him to walk without the leash?”

Bairre reached for his pick. Aodh put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him away down the street, and they got perhaps ten feet before a stone bounced off Aodh’s shoulder. “Oy! Come face me, giant, if you think you’re so mighty! I’ll cut you down to size!”

“Let me—” Bairre tried to turn, furiously, but Aodh tightened his grip and kept them moving until the tavern was out of sight.

After that, Aodh could barely walk through the village without the soldiers calling him out. He ignored them, he always did, telling himself firmly that thumping his lordship’s chosen would only get them in greater strife. But it burned, it burned hard, to go home and see the disdain in Rúadhán’s eyes. It burned worse to see it in Brin and Conán’s.

“Why _don’t_ you do something?” Brin demanded one night. “They’re calling you out! If you don’t defend yourself, why don’t you at least defend the clan?”

“Because he’s not stupid,” Betha snapped, and pointed to the door. “Go and fetch firewood.”

“It’s too late to fetch firewood,” Brin said stubbornly. “You’re just saying that to make me stop asking.”

“These men don’t honour our laws, Brin,” said Aodh quietly without looking up from fitting Seamus’s axe-head with the new handle he had finished whittling to size. “They want me to fight them so they can claim I attacked them and have me killed. At best, the rest of you will be branded as a traitor’s family and live under a yoke. At worse, the village rises against them and his lordship is forced to bring the bulk of the militia back to put us under martial law. If it came to that, we would lose. Many of us would die. Those that survived would have to live under a far closer rule than we do even now.”

“It ain’t right,” Brin insisted, but he subsided. Aodh glanced toward Rúadhán and saw his little brother scoffing and looking superior. Aodh’s heart sank. What had Rúadhán done? What was he _going_ to do?

The next evening Aodh didn’t return home right away. He slipped into the village from the lanes and gardens, coming at the tavern from behind, and found Rúadhán near the midden, trying to scale the wall to one of the windows. Aodh clapped a hand to his shoulder and hauled him away, and Rúadhán didn’t let out more than a belligerent squeak. If anyone found them, they’d know what Rúadhán was trying to do. Everyone knew what Rúadhán used his clever hands to do.

Rúadhán didn’t say anything until they reached the darkening shadows of the lane, smacking Aodh’s hand away with a snarl and clutching his—probably stolen—cap to his head. “Someone needs to do something!”

“Thieving will only get you killed,” Aodh said back, trying to control his voice and unable to keep the snap out of it. “Do you know what they do to children who steal over the sea, Rúadhán? They cut off their hands or throw them in a cellar for weeks on end, and call it justice! These people are barbarians. Don’t encourage them to be more so.”

Rúadhán sneered. “So instead it’s better to bow to their yoke like tame dogs? You’re the strongest man in the village, Aodh! You could fight all the pups his lordship left here!”

“And then his lordship would return and kill everyone _else_ ,” Aodh said, and exhaled slowly, and forced himself to relax. He put a hand on Rúadhán’s shoulder, but Rúadhán shook it off. “We don’t have the forces to drive them out,” Aodh said quietly anyway, “even if we _could_. They have castles, and they’ve married so many of our own. How do you tell a clanswoman her children must be sent away because her husband was from Norman stock? His lordship isn’t so bad as most. At least he allows us to rule ourselves, most times.”

“It ain’t _right_ ,” Rúadhán insisted, “coming and taking all _our_ land, and saying all _our_ laws are wrong.”

“Such is the nature of power, Rúadhán, and we have little.”

“We could take Cork, if we all of us came together.”

“No. We could only make Cork suffer. Even if we could take it, we could never hold it.”

Rúadhán still stood stubbornly defiant, but his shoulders slumped. Aodh reached out again, and this time Rúadhán didn’t shake him off; so Aodh turned him away from the village centre and toward the lower slopes of home, bypassing the main street with the lanes behind the houses.

“Torches?” Rúadhán said, puzzled by the light through the houses up ahead. Aodh frowned.

“Go and get Garbhán,” he said quietly. He was probably in the tavern, or across the street from it, watching the militiamen.

“He won’t believe—”

“Do as I say, Rúadhán.” Aodh pushed him back and kept going. Rúadhán was right; Garbhán may not believe Rúadhán had a legitimate concern. But it would be his duty to investigate, and at least it meant that Rúadhán was away from the house.

The torches guttered against damp straw and mud, and Aodh heard the sound of laughter and a mocking shout. Then was the sound of a door splintering and Siomha’s scream, and Eoghan shouting, and Aodh broke into a run, squeezing between the huts. The leather curtain had been yanked off, and the mud-plastered door was broken. One of the militiamen stood in the way, still holding a torch; Aodh yanked him around and laid him out with a punch to the face, and ran inside.

Something caught him across the face and Aodh staggered, his ears ringing and head throbbing, and tasting blood in his mouth.

“Hoy, here he is, it’s the giant!” hollered one of the militiamen, and Aodh managed to get his axe up to block the second blow from the club. It jarred his arm and his wrist twinged and his fingers went limp, and the axe spun out of his hand. “Hold him!”

A militiaman took his shoulder and Aodh gripped his wrist and twisted until bones snapped and he screamed, and then shoved him into one of his comrades. Another of the militia swore and leapt at him, but Aodh dodged and punched, and he went down. Aodh caught movement and spun and tried to bring up his arm to block the club, but it caught him across the head and his vision went black, and then he was on his knees, the world turning strangely.

He tried to rise and two of the militiamen came down on his back and his knees slid out from under him, and he hit the ground with a thud that made his head pound once more.

“Barbarians,” said one of the militiamen, and Aodh spat out dirt and tried to look up, and even through the tilt he caught the sneer. Siomha was crying, holding Eoghan in the corner; there was blood in his hair and his eyes were glazed. Betha stood between two of the militiamen with trembling defiance, her arms twisted behind her back. One of the militiamen had Conán in a headlock so tight that his face was turning purple and Brin was shouting, trying to make him stop.

Someone was still screaming. Mór, it had to be Mór, and Aodh saw Sadh holding her in the corner, huddling into the wall.

“Be quiet!” one of the militiamen shouted, and slapped Mór’s misshapen face, and fury rushed through Aodh again so he tried to push himself up and got his chest off the ground. The men exclaimed and bore down on him with all their weight, and added a third to their number. Aodh’s arms shook and buckled and he hit the ground again.

“Mór,” he gasped, and coughed through the pressure on his chest and back. It was hard to breathe, through the weight and the fear and the anger, and his usual strength wasn’t coming like it did in the fields, when he was calm and the energy flowed through him as easily as water through a stream.

“I always wondered what it would be like to have a simpleton woman,” said one of the militiamen through the ringing in Aodh’s ears, and there was laughter.

“No, don’t—” Betha tried to wriggle free and one of the men slapped her.

“You be quiet. We’ll get to you later.”

Aodh’s head pounded. He felt the energy in him like some great force, slipping and sliding through his grasp. He needed to be _calm_. He needed to be _calm_ , to reach it, and he couldn’t, there was no time to be calm, he needed something else—

He tried to wriggle under the weight of three men and one of them hit a bruise on his back, left by the werewolf, and it made his arms go weak. He’d been able to fight off a _werewolf_ and now he couldn’t do anything except lay here and watch. He thought of the werewolf, of its black eyes and insane strength and the way it had kept going even after being filled full of arrows.

_I need something like that._

The force inside him opened up and ran through his body and made his breath catch and the pulse in his head turn to music.

“Aodh!” Sadh screamed as they tore her away from Mór. “Aodh, help!”

The force pulled at him, power and hunger at once, and Aodh thought of watching while his sisters were defiled, of being helpless and the despair he’d feel if he could do _nothing_ to save them. The force seized that feeling and something turned in his chest and Aodh choked on nothing, and his trembling back lifted against the weight of the men on it.

They were like flies, in the way, in _his_ way, and he pushed against them and a long snarl wrenched out of him. It was like moving a mountain.

But it was moving.

“Hold him down!” someone shouted. Aodh barely heard it over Mór shrieking his name, the way that force burned like a knot in his chest and pulled strength from all his limbs until they were heavy and numb.

Aodh pushed himself up and one of the militiamen came at him with a sword, and Aodh jerked as the heat in his chest exploded out of it and dragged him in its wake. He heard screaming and it was him, but it was everyone else too, and most of all it was the _thing_ attached to him whose claws tore through bone and flesh like it was gruel.

_KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL!_

It would kill all of them, he knew dimly. It _wanted_ to kill all of them, all the men and his family too—

_No, don’t!_

_Let me—_

_No!_ _Come back, you have to come back!_

The thing on the leash howled, but the leash shortened and shortened again, the heat that spilled over withdrawing back into him through his chest. The—demon?—sucked back into him and exhaustion struck Aodh all at once, and he barely had the strength to catch himself on his trembling hands.

The quiet was the sort that had weight, and it was broken by a compulsive whimpering only used by badly hurt animals. The sound forced Aodh upright, his breathing raspy and body shaking so hard that he swayed. He saw Mór huddled in the corner, her eyes wide and face splattered with blood and—and other things.

The whole hut was covered in blood and other things. Aodh looked around with uncomprehending eyes at the scene. Movement made him snap around and Betha swung the club at him, and he jerked back.

“Demon,” she gasped, and hauled the club up again, her eyes almost as wide as Mór’s and cheeks stained with tears and blood both. “Get out! Get out!”

She swung again and Aodh caught the club and it smacked into his palm with a barely a sting, and the heat rose up in him.

_How dare she. How dare she! Kill her!_

Betha flinched and dropped the club and Aodh recoiled onto his feet, and staggered. His boots slid on the sodden ground, made even more so by the blood and innards. He looked around and ducked a dented cast-iron pot Brin threw. He looked terrified, but he’d put himself between Aodh and the others.

“Demon!” Betha screamed again, and Aodh heard the sound of confused and irritable voices outside.

_Kill her. Kill them all._

Aodh stumbled from the hut and almost crashed into Garbhán, who was carrying a torch and backed by a couple of the townsmen gripping the defiant militiaman Aodh had punched at the door. Rúadhán was there too, and his eyes widened at the blood on Aodh’s clothes, the bits and pieces of people in his hair. “Aodh?”

_They’re in the way. Kill them! Let me kill them!_

The heat rose in Aodh’s chest and he gasped and clutched it, gripping the side of the hut. Garbhán reached for him and Aodh flinched away. “Don’t touch me! It’s not—”

_It’s not safe._

Bile rose up in Aodh’s throat and he pushed away from the gathering crowd, tripping on the uneven ground and falling to his hands and knees in the mud. He tasted blood in the back of his throat, and his gut heaved.

Rúadhán’s voice rang out and then ended just as quickly. “Betha! Siom—”

_Shut him up for good. I’ll do it. Let me. No one will miss him anyway._

Someone swore and exclamations rose and Aodh heard a wailing cry over it all.

“ _By the Lord_ —”

“God Almighty …”

“It was a demon in my brother! There’s a demon in Aodh!”

Aodh pulled himself to his feet again using the side of the hut, and without looking around he ran unsteadily into the marsh. At first that was all he did—ran, just ran, staggering and slipping and so searingly hot that he ought to have burned from the inside out, and all the while that voice raged at him to go back and slake its bloodlust on the people there.

His ears rang with Betha’s shrieks.

At the edge of the swamp he almost turned toward Donncha’s monastery, and he’d even taken a few steps before his trembling feet mis-stepped and he crashed to the ground. He couldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t make the voice shut up.

Exorcism. Monastery.

_You can’t be rid of me._

Not Donncha’s monastery. Aodh couldn’t take the risk. So he turned in the opposite direction instead, toward the monastery closer to the castle, and hoped he would get there before word from the village.

It was full dark by the time he tripped up the path, his breath coming in short gasps. He fell against the door and pounded at its heavy timber, conscious of the tears on his cheeks but not _caring_. It seemed an eternity before someone answered, and Aodh hung on the arch as torchlight spilled across the entry.

“Please,” he gasped. “Please help me.”

“Come in,” said the monk hurriedly, waving him inside and closing the door.

_Look at him. Soft. Weak. But full of life. Full of blood._

Aodh’s stomach turned sickeningly and he looked down to breathe, and saw the drying, rusty blood caking his clothes, saw the footprints he was leaving on the stone floor. Aodh raised his hands and watched them shake with a numb sort of fascination, and the bits congealing in the lines of his palm and under his nails.

“What happened?” asked the brother with concern, and put a hand on Aodh’s elbow.

_How dare he touch us. Rip off his fingers, twist his arm until it cracks—_

Aodh flinched away. “Please,” he said again, and noticed this time that his voice was hoarse from the screaming. “Please, there’s—there’s something inside of me—”

_Kill him now!_

“Please,” Aodh said again, hugging himself as though that would keep in that horrible pooling heat, as if it would stop his arms from going heavy and numb. “It wants me to kill. Please get it out of me.”

“Of course,” said the brother soothingly, but Aodh saw the worry in his eyes. “Come this way.”

Aodh followed him, shivering even with the flush of the monster inside of him. He could feel it staring out of his eyes, looking at the monk’s back and judging his size and knowing that if he wanted he could reach out a hand and—

The brother took him to a small stone room with a stone floor patterned in the shape of a circle and lit by simple candelabras. It wasn’t a large monastery, this one, barely a dozen monks in all—that was why Donncha had gone to the other. He thought that a larger monastery would be less likely to have a rat infestation. Aodh only hoped that so few would be enough to save him.

He curled up by the wall, hugging his chest, and waited until the brother came back. He didn’t come back alone. Aodh watched all the monks of the monastery file in, his breathing hitching and the warmth in his chest heightening again.

_Look at them all. Kill them. It will be glorious._

“You’re in need of an exorcism?” asked one of the monks, older than the one who had opened the door, with grey hair and a lined face. Aodh nodded. “How long have you noticed the demon’s influence?”

“Tonight,” Aodh whispered. “I—”

_Killed. Tore them apart as they deserved._

Aodh started trembling and couldn’t stop, and he put his head down and tried to breathe through the tears. A hand came down on his head and he flinched.

_Rip it off. Kill him for the impudence._

“That you came to us so quickly speaks well,” said the monk. “Into the circle, my friend. We’ll help you.”

Aodh took a few deep breaths and failed to gather any of his vaunted calm, and he unfolded himself and crawled into the circle. Many hands came down on his head and shoulders, and he gasped at the surge of hot fury that came from within him.

 _How dare they. How dare they! Kill them, all of them, bathe in their blood, use your power to make them weep, make them_ bleed _—_

Aodh bowed his head and clutched a hand to his chest as though that would keep the demon in, and struggled to breathe through the pain of it. The monks began to speak, their voices rising and falling in Latin around him, and although the demon’s voice came soft, it cut right through them.

_Their God can’t save them. Their God is nothing. Let us feast on their flesh, crack their bones and pop their eyeballs—_

They dripped water on him and Aodh jerked in surprise, cried out at the pain in his chest and the grate in his ears. The demon rose up in him, and his limbs fell numb.

“Stop!” he gasped, and struggled to get away before he hurt them truly, but the Latin never faltered even as more hands came to hold him down—seven of them, just to _keep_ him down.

_Yes yes yes yes let us snap their necks, let us hear them scream, let us—_

Aodh shuddered and then screamed at the pain in his chest, and screamed again as the heat burst out into that shrieking visage of claws and fangs. He felt it tear through the monks around him, heard their screams of pain and terror, felt the demon’s glee and hunger surging through him inch by inch.

If it kept going, he realised dimly, there wouldn’t be anything of him left.

 _Come back!_ he ordered, and that irritating chant had stopped so it was easier, but the demon wailed and swiped at the stone of the walls and its claws cut through rock. _Come back!_

Aodh pulled it back, shoved the heat back from his hands and from his arms and finally back into his chest where it belonged, and sank onto his side, sobbing and coughing. He meant to open his eyes, to get up and see who was left—if _anyone_ was left—but the exhaustion rose up faster than the demon’s heat, and Aodh fell asleep right there on the hard stone floor.

 

_Wake up._

The voice was a growl, an insistent growl cutting through the darkness.

_Wake up!_

Aodh’s eyes snapped open. He stared at the ceiling, and in front of it Aichear’s face, grim and lined and with tears on his cheeks and a sword over his head. Aodh mumbled, “Aichear?”

Aichear faltered. The grim look turned to uncertainty, to anguish, to defeat, and he lowered the sword. “Aodh?” he asked quietly. “Is it you?”

Aodh blinked and shifted. His body ached and his breath caught in his throat, and he tried to remember the last day. Aichear was here. Aichear had come home. He hadn’t said he would, but after Sadh’s last letter about the werewolf and the militiamen maybe he decided it would be faster just to come …

The militiamen.

Aodh sat upright suddenly and it made his gut turn so he rolled onto his hands and knees and retched. Aichear hovered, but didn’t come closer. When Aodh finally lifted his head, panting and wiping hair out of his face, he saw rust-coloured splatters on the walls and shrivelled, congealed innards littering the floor, still wearing the remains of burlap robes. The pages of a shredded book had absorbed blood until they were stiff lumps, and great raking divots had been scoured out of the walls.

Aodh heard a strangled moan and felt it in his throat, and still couldn’t quite feel like it was his.

_Yesssss. Glorious. Better to paint the walls fresh, revel in the blood and flesh you reave._

Aodh put his head down on his arm and took a breath, and it came out as a sob. He heard Aichear take a step closer, and remembered the sword.

 _Kill me,_ he wanted to ask, but the demon snarled and heat seared his chest, and Aodh let out a cry, trembling as he bowed into the floor.

The demon refused to be killed. Refused to leave him. Refused to die.

“Help me,” he whispered. His voice came out ragged.

“I don’t know how,” Aichear said helplessly. “If the monks couldn’t save you—how could I? I can’t become a kinslayer, Aodh. I can’t damn you to hell if there’s any chance you could save yourself.”

And Aodh couldn’t ask it, either. Bad enough that he was damned, without sending Aichear to hell for kinslaying—and that was even if he could manage it without the demon taking over to defend itself. Aodh took a deep, ragged breath and swallowed over and over until some of the heat eased.

He heard a step and then a soft thud, and then Aichear’s hand on his shoulder, ginger and wary. Aodh flinched and scrabbled away from the touch, putting his hand down on a stiff, cold arm and tripping over a hunk of torso so he landed on his arse in the gore.

“Don’t touch me,” he said hoarsely, looking everywhere but at his brother. “It isn’t safe.”

“Aodh—” Aichear took a deep, trembling breath. “Aodh, you have to go. The villagers—they’ve raised against you. They went to Donncha first. They thought that’s where the demon would go. But I thought—I mean, I _hoped_ you’d still have enough influence to go where he wasn’t, and you did. That gives me _hope_ , brother. It gives me hope that you can save yourself. But you have to go, before they come for you here.”

Where could he possibly go? Aodh didn’t know. Maybe into the woods would be enough. Maybe just somewhere far enough away that he couldn’t harm anyone. The thought of leaving his family made his chest clench, and he almost choked on the demon’s heat.

“Aodh?”

Aodh nodded, swallowing, and managed to croak, “I heard.”

Aichear nodded and rose, and the blood didn’t even leave marks on his breeches. It had dried too much. “Go now,” he said. “I’ll tell them I came too late. But you have to _go_ , Aodh.”

 _Or,_ said the demon, _you could kill him too, and then kill the villagers as well …_

Aodh shivered with the flush and staggered to his feet, and without looking at Aichear—without daring—he stumbled out of the monastery and into the woods.

 

For six months he lived in the Goat’s Hole caves between the villages, stalking the woods between them. Sometimes the demon got too much and burst out, and savaged stone and trees and beasts and anything nearby. The third time, Aodh was hungry enough to pick up the parts to eat them, and then choked when he tried, and heaved until there was nothing left.

The fifth time, he ate without being ill.

There were men in the woods every month, at full-moon, as if that made a difference when it didn’t. They came to the cave entrances and tried to flush him out, but he was never there. He kept far away, huddled beneath logs and between roots, afraid that if he got too close it would be them the demon savaged instead of dumb beasts. But sometimes they came close to the hollows where he curled up shivering, and he listened to them through the warm roar in his ears, and heard things about his family.

Aichear had been interrogated for hours by his lordship’s men before returning to Cork. His militia’s wage was the only one they could rely on now. Eoghan was head-sick since being beaten. He had trouble with his memory and sometimes became angry without cause and slapped Aodh’s sisters. Even though he apologised, weeping, afterward, in the end the twins drove him out. Brin had taken to the fields. Conán got short of breath, but no one in town would take him for work, so Siomha had gone into the fields as well. The family who kept Sadh as their daughter’s companion had refused to take her back.

After six months the patrols waned, and Aodh hoped his family would endure the taint of his existence.

Then the pain had come, much worse than anything the demon made because it ripped through his whole _body_. Aodh remembered writhing on the stone floor of the caves, screaming until his voice broke and he spat blood. He remembered raging through the woods, tearing at trees and bushes and anything living that happened to come his way. When he woke up his fingers were torn and bleeding and he ached so badly he could barely move, and the demon still hadn’t gone.

It only coiled lazily in his chest, like a smug serpent binding him in its grasp.

 _Mine now,_ it whispered. _Always mine. We’ll feast together. You’ll kill for me. You wait and see._

But after that, when it rose in his chest so hot it choked him and made him tremble with its fury and bloodlust, it couldn’t force its way out. Not unless he let it.

When the men came into the woods and saw the swathes of destruction and butchered animals, they’d had enough. They didn’t attack Aodh’s family, but the next morning, he saw his siblings with their bundles, Mór on a leash and the townspeople pointedly not looking their way as they made their way out of town.

_Take them all. Kill them all now, every one of them, make them pay for shunning them, for shunning you …_

Aodh wondered if he should go with. It was safer for them if he stayed in the caves. But as they reached the rise and vanished from sight panic made the heat thicker, and when Aodh tried to imagine a lonely life far from his siblings a yawning abyss of despair opened up inside him, with the demon ready to push him in. And then he’d be lost.

So Aodh left the caves, creeping a hundred yards distant from the road, watching at night and snatching restless sleep where he could, and followed his siblings until they reached Cork.

 

The rat scrabbled through the refuse and Aodh dove in after it, flinging aside inedible scraps. He rose up with a snarl a moment later, the rat gone into whatever hole was under the midden. Hunger turned in Aodh’s gut, making him feel sunken and empty, as if the heat of the demon was pulling everything else he felt into the fire of its presence just to keep itself burning.

“Oy! Outta there, you pestilent sack of bones!”

Aodh looked up and reared away from the swinging club. He seized it on its downswing and yanked the man who owned it forward.

_Yes! Kill!_

Aodh flinched, but the man lost his balance and fell into the midden with a sharp crack, and fell still. Aodh stared at him, at the blood on his head where he’d struck hard stone, and his insides twisted hollowly.

 _Eat him,_ whispered the demon. _Give us strength. Nourish yourself so we can kill others. He’s no different now than the rat._

“Aodh?”

Aodh jerked up from where he’d bent over the body, thin fingers still gripping its hair to twist its head and make the softest flesh accessible. The slight figure in the alley entrance came closer and Aodh saw Rúadhán, taller than he had been, gangly and wrapped in an over-large coat. But a good coat. One that only looked damp on the outside instead of wet through.

He had to be as old as the twins had been, back when—back.

“Aodh?” Rúadhán said again, and his gaze dropped to the body in the midden. Aodh said nothing.

_Kill him._

_It’s R_ _úadh_ _án._

_He’s in your way._

_It’s_ Rúadhán.

Suddenly Rúadhán was close and he reached out to touch Aodh’s arm and Aodh flinched. “Don’t touch me,” he muttered. “It isn’t safe.”

_Kill. Him._

Rúadhán drew back. “Come on,” he said quietly, and turned and walked away. After a moment, Aodh stirred himself to follow.

They didn’t step out into the streets of Cork, but stayed in the winding alleys and narrow slits between buildings, where shadows hung and refuse covered the stink of dying men. Rúadhán knew these backways well, never hesitating but keeping his hat low. Aodh towered over him, even hunched as he’d become, but so thin he could follow through the narrow cracks Rúadhán squeezed through.

Rúadhán took Aodh to a tavern on the edge of the slums, so on the edge it was practically decent. The barman gave them a hard stare but Rúadhán showed him a fistful of coin and the barman grudgingly pointed them to the darkest corner. No need to let his other patrons see the beggar.

“Where did you get the coin?” Aodh asked out of something resembling habit, but his voice was hoarse and rusty. It had been hoarse ever since—since.

“Does it matter?” Rúadhán asked, and the barman put down a bowl of stew on the table, and no, it _didn’t_ matter. Aodh pulled the bowl close and used his fingers to shovel offal into his mouth.

“Aodh, you’ll choke—” Rúadhán put out a hand to pull the bowl away and Aodh whirled at him, snarling and clutching the bowl close, the heat of hunger and demon alike rushing through his veins.

_Yes. Kill him._

Rúadhán flinched and pulled back, putting some space between them. Aodh curled over the bowl, keeping it close to eat like a ravenous wolf, and couldn’t find the time between bites to apologise. By the time the bowl was empty he felt almost too exhausted to find the words, either. By rights he _should_ have choked, or at least been ill with unaccustomed food.

The demon felt that was too inefficient.

The demon thought a lot of things were too inefficient.

“We didn’t know you followed,” Rúadhán said after a moment. Aodh grunted, slumped in the chair. It was too much effort to talk. “Mór’s dead.” Aodh stirred, raised his head. “The coughs. Last winter. She always got them the worst.”

It took a moment for Aodh to find the words. None of the other beggars talked to him. Not the vicious giant. It’d been a long time since he talked. “The others?”

“Betha’s on the docks,” Rúadhán said, and then added, “Fish markets. Not the other work. She’s got a cough too. It’s the air. Aichear’s still soldiering. Donncha’s still at the monastery. Siomha’s mending linens for sailcloth. Brin’s apprenticed to a wainwright. Conán’s at a tannery. He’s—”

“Got a cough.”

Everyone at a tannery had a cough.

“It’s the fumes. He’s still short of breath. The tannery was the only place that would take him.”

“Sadh?”

Rúadhán smiled and it was the most beautiful thing Aodh had seen in years. He couldn’t remember the last time Rúadhán smiled in his presence since _before_ everything went wrong. “She’s a noble’s companion.”

Not a maid. Maids weren’t learned. Maids picked up after their mistresses and, if they were lucky, rose high enough to have authority in the household before they died. A noblewoman’s companion was a friend and confidant, a way of paying wealth forward by helping an unfortunate out of the filth. It was a good position. A strong position. It might even save her.

How old was Sadh now? Thirteen. The same age Mór had been—before.

“Aodh?” Aodh stirred and looked at Rúadhán. “How long have you been starving?”

“When did you arrive in Cork?” This was the first time Aodh’s stomach had been filled since … almost since he could remember, even though he knew that was wrong. He’d had his fill to eat sometimes, back in Carraig Thuathail. Now it felt like the hunger was always there, stretching into his past like a great shadow.

“If you come here to eat, I’ll pay for it.”

 _Where do you get the coin?_ Aodh almost asked and didn’t, because that coat was a good sturdy coat, and the cap was a good sturdy cap, and neither of them fit his brother because they hadn’t been bought for him. Because he’d stolen them.

Instead Aodh only nodded and Rúadhán got to his feet, and flashed a familiar, impish grin at him before strolling out of the tavern with his cap at a jaunty angle.

 

After that Aodh got stronger. He could do more in the day besides curl up by a wall and wrestle with the demon. He attended the tavern in the mornings, when the stew was from the night before and the dregs of the cauldron, and cheapest. Sometimes Rúadhán came with.

In the morning Aodh slept on a nearly full stomach. At night the demon was restless and he couldn’t afford to sleep, in case someone stabbed him while his guard was down. Now that he had the strength, Aodh spent the time prowling from street to street. He found the place his siblings made their home, though it wasn’t much more than a room in a maze of hastily constructed huts between buildings. It was off the ground and it was clean. That was enough.

In the afternoon, Aodh could follow his siblings at work. He saw Betha sorting fish in a warehouse on the docks, her hands chapped and bleeding from the cold and scales. He saw Siomha sitting in a line of other women, fingers pricked from the huge needles they used to sew the sailcloth. He saw Aichear as one more ragged uniform in the lines of soldiers, and Brin expertly lathing wood, and Conán holding his head high and breathing slow, wheezing breaths against the tannery’s fumes.

Aodh stood in the alleys and saw Sadh in a simple but pretty dress, sewn for her by Siomha’s callused fingers, holding her lady’s hand to guide her carefully around the horseshit in the street.

“ _You_ don’t live like that, do you, Sadh?” her lady asked once, sounding shocked as she pointed to a family of five huddled in a broken-down shack, in the middle of sewerage runoff between two buildings.

“No,” said Sadh without looking.

Her lady twirled her parasol. “I should like to see where you live one day.”

Sadh smiled and said nothing, and Aodh watched from the shadows and wished he could stop her smiles from being so burdened by the past. He couldn’t. Not anymore. So he just watched, and slowly the smiles stopped being burdened all on their own.

He learned each of their movements. How they went to work, how they hurried home to avoid footpads. He had streets and nooks where he watched. One day he came to an alley where he watched Sadh and her lady step down for the townhouse in the evening and found it already filled with the broad backs of two men looking through the other end.

“There it is,” one of them said, and Aodh heard the rattle of a carriage’s wheel, and saw the glint of a blade.

The fury rushed through him so strong and hot that he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and snapping the man’s neck. The other footpad whirled and with a snarl Aodh slammed him against the wall and punched him in the throat until he choked, his eyes bulging, and went limp.

The demon snarled satisfaction. _Yes!_

“Hallo?” called one of the footman from the carriage, and Aodh heard a footstep.

_Go! Kill him as well, tear him to pieces, revel in his blood—_

Trembling, Aodh drew back into the shadows, and the silhouette of the gangly footman came to the alley entrance, his hand on the knife at his belt.

“Seamus?” called Sadh’s lady. “What is it?”

Seamus stared down at the bodies, and Aodh’s heart pounded. “Two footpads, my lady,” he said, sounding disconcerted. “But someone got them before they got us.”

“Oh. Well, that’s alright then. Sadh? What’s wrong? You went positively white …”

Sadh’s response was lost over the sound of Seamus’s footsteps as he left the alley entrance, and Aodh exhaled slowly and unsteadily, and gripped his shaking fingers into fists.

 _See,_ whispered the demon, _how you can make all of them pay._

_Yes. Yes, I see._

Quietly Aodh stepped back into the network of alleys behind the houses.

 

Aodh did more than watch after that. Watching meant he could see where the threats lay, but now he could take action. He even followed Rúadhán, and defended him out of sight when some older thieves made him a target. Rúadhán knew he was there, but didn’t say anything. Aodh was helping him build a reputation. He could tell, because the quality of Rúadhán’s clothes increased dramatically.

It was easier to control the demon when they were of an accord. Easier to control when he had a _purpose_.

When Siomha was kept late at the warehouse and had to walk home in the dark, Aodh made sure the footpads weren’t a threat. When sailors harassed Betha on the docks, he drove them off. When Conán fainted in the tannery, Aodh made sure he still had his job afterward. When Brin’s worst customers tried to short-change him. When Aichear was called out by a nob and had to either become a coward or be punished for locking weapons with someone above his station.

When Sadh became more and more beautiful, and went to balls and even had suitors.

Aodh watched the brightly lit townhouse from the shadows across the street, watched the nobles laughing about the entrance and the pretty carriages come to take them away, their smartly-dressed footman all straight and proper. Young men drifted past, close enough to their homes to walk or wanting to have another drink before retiring to bed. Snatches of conversation found its way to Aodh’s alley.

Only one of them caught his attention.

“—lovely ladies here tonight. Who’s your fancy?”

“Sadh. That dark beauty?”

“—’s companion? She isn’t even nobleborn!”

“Then no one will object if I tumble her tomorrow night—”

The words were lost but then men laughed, and the demon turned over in Aodh’s chest.

_Kill them. Do it. Insolent, impudent—they dare laugh about defiling what’s yours—_

_Not yet._

Aodh clenched his trembling hands and slipped deeper into the alley, following the two men until they split. The one who’d threatened Sadh’s virtue left his friend at a tavern to return home, walking with an uneven step. He passed by Aodh’s alley and Aodh reached out and yanked him back into it, hand over his mouth so his shout was muffled, and held him struggling against his chest, where the demon seethed.

“ _I_ object,” he growled into the man’s ear, and then snapped his neck. The man fell limp in his arms.

 _Should have made him bleed. Why do you never make them bleed? I want_ blood _._

Aodh slung the body over his shoulder and went to the tavern where his friend had stayed, and waited until the friend came out stumbling. He followed the friend to his house, and when he had gone in and the lamps had been doused, Aodh stepped from shadow to shadow and flung the body on his doorstep.

He’d think twice about tumbling a lady now, noblewoman or not.

The demon was restless for the rest of the night. It always was. Aodh prowled the docks and the slums, and barely noticed now how everyone stayed out of his way. Even drunken sailors, when they saw his tall shadow cast out along the dock, sobered up in a hurry and skirted his path.

The next day the demon was calmer but had left the taste of bitterness in its wake, a taste that lasted to the end of the week. Each morning Aodh went to Rúadhán’s chosen tavern hoping some food in his belly would ease the sour feeling. When he slept it eased off, and in the afternoons when he went to the same familiar watching places it came back.

Betha and Siomha weren’t on the docks. Conán wasn’t at the tannery. Brin was at the wainwright’s, but he looked nervous and kept his head down. When Aodh went to the small house they had moved into after the hovel, there was too much a crowd on the street to see anything at all.

The morning after that Rúadhán was waiting when Aodh went to eat at the tavern, splendid in well-cut hide breeches and soft leather boots, and a jaunty cap with a feather in it; he was a young man now, not a child, and well-to-do in that dangerous way thieves could become. He waited until Aodh had eaten before saying anything, and then broke the silence abruptly. “You need to stop.”

Aodh’s brow wrinkled. “Stop?”

“Stop,” Rúadhán repeated, like he hadn’t rehearsed his words, or hadn’t found words that worked. “You need to stop protecting us, Aodh. You need to go away.”

_How dare he._

“I’m helping you.”

“No,” said Rúadhán, and his face was set but he held himself tense. If it had been anyone else Aodh would have called them frightened. “You’re not. You killed that nob the other night, didn’t you?”

“He was planning to steal Sadh’s virtue.”

That made Rúadhán pause and his mouth draw tight, but then he said, “You still need to go away. There were actual suitors there that night, Aodh. There was a young man she _liked_. Now his family is refusing to have anything to do with her.”

“Would they have wanted anything to do with her after she was taken?” Aodh demanded, and gripped his hands to fight the heaviness creeping down his limbs. “The laws here blame a woman for being attacked!”

“I had to talk her lady’s family out of sending her away,” Rúadhán snapped. “Betha and Siomha have lost their jobs. Yesterday we had to give Conán over for trepanning, because when the tanner heard the guard had been asking questions he claimed Conán called a demon on him seven months ago. Aichear might be expelled from the militia. And Brin’s on the brink of losing his apprenticeship on the off-chance some of their patrons’ deaths are his fault. Did you have anything to do with that, Aodh?”

“They were robbing him.”

Rúadhán swore at him, and hard. “ _Go away_ , Aodh. Everyone knows the demon of the dockyards. Now they know the demon’s attached to the _family_ , not the docks. _You’re not helping us,_ Aodh.”

_This is how he repays you for all you’ve done? Kill him! Should have killed him earlier! Make him bleed!_

Aodh sat there, trying to breathe evenly through the heat and the tremble. He wasn’t helping them. He’d been protecting them, but he wasn’t helping them. If he wanted to help them, he should leave.

No one would hire or marry members of a cursed family.

“I’ll go,” he managed, and his voice was low and hoarse, and dulled. Rúadhán relaxed, but only very slightly.

“You’ll go?”

“Yes.”

Rúadhán shifted and put his arms on the table and leaned over them to exhale, and Aodh realised that he’d had his hand on a knife. He’d been ready to defend himself, or pre-empt defending himself. “I’ll meet you here every week,” Rúadhán said quietly. “So you know what’s happening. How we are. But you can’t come near us, Aodh. You can’t come near us ever again.”

_Traitor! How dare he! Rip him to pieces, make him scream!_

“I won’t.”

Aodh rose and walked out of the tavern.

 

He kept his word. He left the docks and went to the north of Cork, and all he knew of his family were the things Rúadhán told him every week when they met. Conán lingered for a month after the trepanning before he died. Betha couldn’t find any work at all, thanks to her lingering cough and arthritis in her hands, and spent most of her time at home. Aichear had suffered a demotion and was relegated to non-essential tasks for months before his superiors grudgingly accepted the curse might be gone. Siomha found work as a seamstress. Donncha, from all accounts, was one of his monastery’s most blessed itinerant preachers.

And Sadh found another young man.

Rúadhán had been right. Aodh was helping them better by staying away. He couldn’t find much work, himself—the demon of the docks was still too close a nightmare, and Aodh’s height worked against him. But he found enough to eat, and sometimes visited the kitchens which offered food for the poor.

Once, Rúadhán missed a meeting. Aodh waited at the table for hours, drowsing after his meal, until finally the barkeep came up with a cudgel and told him to leave.

Aodh had promised not to go near the others, but he could still trace Rúadhán’s movements. It took two days to find him slumped behind a midden and half covered by refuse flung out the window above. Rats had already nibbled his fingers and face half away, and at the edges of the knife-wound in his gut.

_Kill someone._

_There’s no one to kill._

_There’s plenty out on the street._

Aodh picked up his body and waited until nightfall, and went to the small house where most of his siblings still lived, and lay Rúadhán gently on the doorstep. They’d find him in the morning. Would they think he was a threat or a gift? Aodh didn’t know, but he closed Rúadhán’s eyes and folded his hands over his chest, and hoped it would be the second.

After that, there was no way for Aodh to keep track of his days or weeks. The fellows at the soup kitchens started giving him glances and murmuring.

_Kill them._

Aodh went to the west of Cork and started attending the kitchens there instead. He knew time was passing, but could only tell how much when people gave him strange looks because of his height instead of backing away in fear. He even managed to find some labour, filling or unloading carts. People were forgetting the demon of the docks.

He sat hunched in a corner of a courtyard, eating the soup given him by a nun, when there was a flurry of whispers among the beggars. A man got up on the wall by the entrance, and it took Aodh a moment to realise he knew him; it was the footman, Seamus, wearing blacks and greys that didn’t draw the eye. His hair was grey. Not a young man anymore.

At least this one had lived to see old age.

“I have a message from Lady Sadh Ronayne to her brother, Aodh,” Seamus announced, scanning the crowd. Aodh hunched deeper in to the shadows. “The message is: ‘Attend me.’”

Then Seamus got down and left the nuns looking very unhappy and the beggars and thieves murmuring to each other. Without drawing attention, Aodh got up and left.

How many soup kitchens had Seamus been to, to deliver that message? Had he started with the docks?

Did it matter? Aodh didn’t even know how long it had been since he spoke to one of his siblings other than Rúadhán. He didn’t know how long it had been since he spoke to _R_ _úadh_ _án_.

When he went to Sadh’s townhouse there was a filthy crowd in front of it, beggars and thieves and all kinds from the streets shouting for attention. All of them claimed to be her brother, Aodh. The range of excuses for any difference in looks was truly astounding, and not one of them believable. Seamus stood at the front of them with a couple of footmen on either side, and all of them were armed and unmoving.

Aodh crossed the street quickly, out of habit, and had to remember not to hunch to try and fit into the crowd. His shadow fell across the men in the back and one of them noticed and turned, and quietened. He patted the back of the man in front, and the man in front turned, and they both shuffled out of Aodh’s way.

Slowly the quiet spread from back to front. The crowd parted before him, a full head taller than anyone else there. Aodh stopped in front of Seamus and said, “I am Aodh.”

The footmen were pale. So was Seamus. But Seamus, at least, looked Aodh in the eye as he nodded, and then turned to open the door. Aodh followed him in and paused by the door at his gesture. He’d never been in a noble’s house before. It was pretty. Clean. Filled with smooth lines and patterned rugs, and without any gaps in the wall or ceiling. Warm inside.

Seamus went through a door to the side and left it ajar. Aodh didn’t have to move to listen.

“—long are we going to put up with this?” whispered a woman.

“I don’t know,” said a man, not Seamus. “Mother said we’d know him for certain.”

“A giant, I know. But how long must we wait for him to arrive? And how can we be _sure_ —”

Seamus cleared his throat. “Lady Sadh’s brother, my lord, my lady.”

He bowed out of the next room and passed Aodh to slip through the front door and run off the charlatans. The man and the woman who came into the hall weren’t of an age; the man was older, not as old as Seamus but still greying, while the woman was younger. Sadh’s son and grand-daughter, perhaps.

They paled when they saw Aodh, and the grand-daughter gripped her father’s arm. Aodh watched them silently until the son coughed and stepped forward. “You’re Aodh.”

“Yes.”

“Right,” said the son, sounding unnerved. “This way, please. Up the stairs.”

He hesitated and then, very reluctantly, stepped closer to lead Aodh up through the townhouse. The grand-daughter covered her mouth and nose as Aodh passed. He paid it no mind. Nobles had been covering themselves when he passed for as long as he could remember.

They passed a hall stretching off to the side, and on the landing was a framed square of polished bronze. Aodh caught his reflection in it and paused. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had the opportunity to see his reflection.

His face was lined and grimy, his hair matted even tied back. His eyes were darker than he remembered. Other than that, he still looked of an age not much older than he had been when the demon took him for the first time. No wonder the fellows whispered; how long could even beggars on the street not notice that one among them wasn’t getting any older?

The son cleared his throat. Aodh turned away from the looking-glass and followed him up to the next floor, and was ushered into a room on the end. It was a large room with a large bed, posts on each corner. A fire roared in the hearth and it made Aodh shiver. After so long with only the fire inside him, this fire in the hearth made his fingers and hands feel like ice.

“Mother?” said the son, striving to keep the tremble out of his voice. “Your brother?”

Aodh took a step to the side to see around the bed-posts, and Sadh looked back at him silently. She was _old_. Her hair was white and wispy, her face sagging and frame thin. She looked too frail to even sit up without the pillows behind her back.

“You’re dying,” said Aodh.

“You’re not,” said Sadh, and though she didn’t sound surprised, her face was drawn tight.

“The others?”

“Gone,” said Sadh, and Aodh felt a dull thud in behind the demon’s heat. “All gone.”

“How?”

Sadh took a deep breath and Aodh heard it rattle in her chest.

_She’d be no fun to kill at all._

“Rúadhán you know, I imagine,” she said. “Betha in her sleep from the coughs. Siomha too, from a fever. Brin was in an accident in his shop. Impaled. Donncha went to minister to a village beset by the blackening fever. Aichear was sent across the sea to fight the Saracens.”

For some long moments Aodh said nothing. The dullness was still in his chest, but it didn’t do anything. It just sat there, making the demon turn restlessly. There was no one to kill in exchange for his family’s lives.

Finally he said, “You summoned me?”

“Yes.” Sadh took another deep breath and folded her trembling hands in her lap. Her skin looked transparent as paper. “I knew you were here. Rúadhán told me. So now I’m going to make a deal with you.”

Aodh said nothing. He just watched her, trying to reconcile the pretty, enthusiastic young lady who’d been his sister with this wasted ghost. Could it really have been so long?

“I’ve told my son to fill a bag for you,” said Sadh, nodding toward the satchel on the desk in the corner. It was a big one. “It has everything in there you should need. Money. Clothes. Cooking utensils. Everything. I’m going to give it to you, and after you answer one question for me you are going to go away from Cork and never come back. Some people never forgot my family’s curse. I won’t have it hanging over the heads of my children and grandchildren. I won’t.”

Aodh looked at Sadh’s son, standing nervously halfway between the door and the bed. Aodh didn’t know his name, didn’t even know he existed. There was no kinship there. No reason to care.

_So kill him and be done with it._

“What question?” he asked, looking back at Sadh, and she pulled herself up straighter, lifting her chin high.

“I want your name.”

“My name is Aodh.”

“No,” Sadh snapped, and the force of the word made her cough. Her son sprang to her side and the conversation halted until Sahd pulled herself upright again. She was trembling, and her eyes were wide. They glittered with fear and fury and pain all at once. “You’re not my brother. You’re the demon inside of him. My brother died nearly sixty years ago.”

Sixty years. How could it possibly have been so long? Aodh couldn’t even contest the claim. The time had flowed by alternately like water and molasses.

_I haven’t changed. So many years, and I still look the same on the outside._

But he wasn’t the same.

“Shudder,” he said.

“That’s what you do,” said Sadh. “It isn’t your name. Who are you? I bid you to tell me, by God’s authority. After all you’ve taken, you owe us _that_.”

Aodh looked at her, at her trembling defiance and the way her son hovered. Maybe she wouldn’t remember. “Anton.”

_“Do you know Heracles?”_

_“I can’t say I do.”_

_“He was a Greek half-god. Marc Antony said he was descended from his son, and that’s where he got his name, Antony, because the son’s name was Anton. But he just made it up, because there aren’t any records of Heracles having a son called Anton, and if there weren’t any then how did Marc Antony know what his name even was? It’s all false. He’s a false hero.”_

_“And thus the monsters felt themselves safe enough to pursue a pretty young lady?”_

_“Mhm. But then you saved me, Aodh. You’re the real hero.”_

All the life drained out of Sadh’s face and she fell back into her pillows with a wrenching wail. Her son shouted for the maids and leapt back to her side.

Wordlessly Anton went and picked up the knapsack and slung it over his shoulder, and went downstairs while maids and footmen and family members pushed past him on their way up. He came to the door and Seamus and the footmen looked at him nervously as he passed. The crowd backed away.

The demon turned in his chest.

_Should just kill them all. Look at them, staring. It’s annoying. Kill them._

Wails of grief rose up from the house, more than one. Behind him Seamus snapped at the footmen to hold, and then the door slammed as he went inside. The crowd wandered off in twos and threes until the street was empty, save for one.

 _They’re being loud,_ whispered the demon. _You should kill them all._

Silently Anton Shudder trudged on.

 

[1] Known today as Carrigtwohill.


End file.
